[Techtalk] Booting from CDROM

[Maria Blackmore]

hello

On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, Meryll Larkin wrote:

> The computer that I built as a Server is not booting from CDROM.  It did 
> boot from CDROM before there was an OS (RedHat Linux 7.2) on it, but now 
> that I want to UPGRADE, I'm having a difficult time.

This sounds like a coincidence that it won't boot from the CDROM drive
now.

> When I upgraded on my Developer box (RedHat 7.3, a computer which I did 
> not build) I popped the CD into the CDROM and rebooted.  The computer 
> booted to the CD.

hmmm

> When I attempted the same with my Server, it booted to the hard drive 
> and did not read the CD.  I am annoyed that my server is not defaulting 
> to attempt to boot from a CD when a CD is in the CDROM drive at boot 
> time.

This is something that the BIOS takes care of

> When I run cat /etc/fstab on the Server and the Developer box, my 
> results are identical.

The contents of the fstab can't make any difference though

> When I entered the BIOS during the boot process and attempted to reset
> the primary master and slave,

Uhm, what do you mean?
What did you do?

> the boot process would not continue after I made the changes (error
> message)

What was the error message?

> which is what makes me think this is a hardware instead of a software
> issue.

I would suspect that the problem is that the BIOS doesn't know to boot
from the CDROM, or is trying the hard drive first

> I suspect that I neglected to make the harddrive the slave to the CDROM, 
> and I'm not sure if I should be messing with my cables, my jumpers, or 
> if there is some other piece of software I don't know about that I could 
> set.

uhm, sorry, no, booting is a BIOS thing.

> Does this sound right?  When I open my Server should I try the jumpers 
> on the Harddrive first or the cables?

Provided that you can access things that you put in the CD drive when the
operating system is running, I would say that you don't need to open
anything or alter any piece of hardware.

What you need to do is look for the boot order in the BIOS, this usually
ends up in the "BIOS Features" section, though varies between difference
makes of BIOS software.  If you let us know what make of BIOS your machine
uses, I'm pretty certain that someone will have the same version and be
able to guide you through the right options.

If the CD drive doesn't work under linux or another OS then we need to
start looking at what else it could be, this seems quite unlikely to me,
but so simple that it's worth checking first :)

have fun and good luck and stuff

Maria