[PLUG] device IDs on boot

[Wayne Dawson <jongalt@pinn.net>]

I've sometimes wondered how the ids for physical disks are determined in 
Linux.  Now I'm prompted again to wonder, and in this case it makes a 
difference in what I'm doing.  While installing Linux, how do I know which 
device id corresponds to any given physical device?  Choices for a 
particular install I'm doing are:  hda (I think that's the IDE drive, which 
I don't want to install on), sca (a SCSI device I assume), or scb (another 
SCSI device I assume).

If anyone has a quick explanation of how this works or where I can find it, 
please let me know.

Thanks,
Wayne Dawson

More details for those who are interested:
I'm trying to install Red Hat to be booted from a RAID.  I'm very new to 
using RAID.

The RAID is in a separate chassis from the computer I'm using to install 
the OS.  It has a hardware RAID controller (Intel SRCU31LA), and there are 
several hard disks in the RAID chassis.  The computer also has an IDE disk, 
but ultimately this computer will not be used with this RAID (we haven't 
bought the new computer yet).

In the (text based) Red Hat install program, I was given the following 
options to install onto:  hda, sca, and scb.  Not knowing how these device 
names are determined, I guessed sca was where I wanted to install.  The 
install completed and now I have a system that will not boot without the 
boot floppy (a RAID controller vs OS compatibility issue I suspect), but it 
does indeed require the SCSI chassis to be powered on so apparently the 
bulk of the OS resides there.  However, I'm confused about this because my 
RAID controller claims my RAID HOST has a status of "fail" (It's RAID level 
5 by the way, with 3 disks).

Perhaps the disk that is not configured as part of a RAID is available 
through the RAID controller as a standalone disk, and that's what I 
installed the OS on?

_________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group        --       http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.netisland.net/mailman/listinfo/plug