[Soekris] CF Master/Slave issue workaround on 4801

[Lon Willett]

On fre, 2005-10-21 at 00:38 -0700, Phil Karn wrote:
> Zac Bowling wrote:
> > Don't throw away those CF cards yet. I managed to get around the issue 
> > of some of CF cards booting as slave thanks to the new firmware and a 
> > lilo fix for linux users. Its only requires changing the boot order in 
> > the firmware and setting your lilo to boot off your slave (in my case 
> > /dev/hdb). Pretty easy. 
> 
> Which problem is this? Is it the same one I encountered tonight on a 
> net4801 booting Linux from a Lexar 64MB CF card?

I'm fairly new to all this, but I thought that this was a resolved
issue.  It really ought to be in a FAQ somewhere (is there a Soekris
Wiki somewhere?).

I also have one of these annoying CF cards.  Someone more knowledgeable
can correct me if I'm wrong, but my impression is that this is just the
result of braindead CF manufacturers hardwiring their cards as slave
drives.  So there is no possibility to use them as the master.

Thus, if you have such a card, you must:

  1 -- Have the BIOS set correctly, i.e. "set FLASH=Secondary".
  2 -- If you also have a hard drive, it must be jumpered as master or
cable-select.
  3 -- If you also have a hard drive, then the BIOS considers device 80
to be the hard drive, and 81 to be the compact flash.  If you do not
have a hard drive, then 80 is the compact flash and 81 does not exist.
Set your boot order accordingly.
  4 -- As far as the kernel is concerned, the flash drive will always be
"hdb"; if you also have a hard drive, then it will be "hda".
  5 -- I can't speak for lilo, but the grub situation reflects points 3
and 4: i.e. If you have just a flash card, then it is referred to as
(hd0), i.e. your device.map is the line "(hd0)  /dev/hdb".  If you have
both a hard drive and a flash card, then the hard drive is (hd0) and the
flash card is (hd1), i.e. your device.map has the lines "(hd0) /dev/hda"
and "(hd1) /dev/hdb".  Make sure that your menu.lst reflects this
situation appropriately.

This works for me, anyway.

/Lon Willett