I am using Red Hat 9, and I have a Promise SX4000 FastTrak raid card. I was using this configuration just fine until recently. I got a new motherboard, processor, and RAM and installed them yesterday.

After starting the computer I was unable to boot into Linux. I figured this was all due to the hardware changes so I reinstalled Linux (RH9). Right before reinstalling I changed my Raid array of 4 drives from being a Raid 5 to a Raid 0. The install seemed to go off without a hitch, but after rebooting the system halted just as it had right after I installed the new hardware.

After much frustration, I discovered that the cause of my inability to boot the system was due to the raid card. When I deleted the Raid array, the system booted up just fine. I realized there was no driver installed for the raid card, so after some difficulty I was able to install the driver for the raid card. I rebooted and it showed the card being detected.

Well, I re-defined the array and whaddya know, system still halted in the same place. It halts right after grub is run. Here is what I see on the screen:

Booting 'Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-8)'

root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/
[Linux-bzImage, setup=0x1400, size=0x10f646]
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-8.img
[Linux-initrd @ 0x37f96000, 0x59bde bytes]


At this point I just have a blinking cursor.

The drivers I obtained for the raid card from promise had options for installing the raid card at the same time as installing Red Hat. So I followed those instructions, doing a linux dd at the command line on a new install of RH9. The installer found the raid device (sda), and was even able to format it (I selected to have it mounted as /raid). Install went off without a hitch, but as soon as I rebooted it, I got stuck at the exact same place again.

I'm really clueless now as to what the problem is. I know this raid card works with RH9, as it worked before I swapped hardware. I figured that if the install could find and format the raid, it should be able to boot fine with it enabled as well.

This is my main file server for my small office, as well as having mount points that are very important to everyone. It's been offline for too long already, someone PLEASE help!

Thanks!

edit: BTW, the main OS drive is NOT a part of the raid, it's /dev/hda.

This sounds like a Grub bug that I have run into on RH 9, Fedora Core 2,3,4 and RH WS 4. Basically, during install, grub doesn't mark the appropriate partitions correctly for booting. Once you reboot after install, grub phase 2 gets hung. If the below works and you can mount your partitions via a recovery shell, then we can tell grub how to see your partitions again.

Can you boot via your redhat cd and type: `linux rescue` when the menu comes up. Follow the recovery menu and get a recovery shell and allow it to mount your partitions (all menus). When it does all this and it gives you a shell, do the `chroot /mnt/sys.image` that it tells you. This should put you onto your partitions. From there, goto /boot/grub folder, you should see grub.conf

Can you please post the contents of that file so that we can run grub setup and tell it about the raid again.

In the near future, I will be installing either a RAID system of 5 Western Digital 74GB Raptor Hard-Drives by using a "syncRAID" PCI card developed from Netcell and manufactured by Pine Technologies. These syncRAID cards have rated highly on Tom's Hardware Site, if you ever venture there, I believe. The tech support staff at Netcell is tops, number one. I asked about the ability to run Linux on these cards; and, taking three days, they set some machines up and tested it so as to advise me and other Linux interested clients. (They even told how much wattage the syncRAID card used--a minute 5.5 watts; which is pretty small compared to graphics and sound cards.) I was told basically, briefly how to install partitions and an operating system onto the syncRAID device by a fellow who was well versed in Linux and beliefed I was too. I am not; however. . . . What he said was to install a partition or an operating system onto a single hard drive, not running under any RAID system. Then he said to install the RAID hardwhere and get up and running. (That is the difficult part here I realize but I thought I would offer the person's advise.) After the RAID device is running, he said to "clone" partitions and operating systems to the RAID device from the single hard drive not under any RAID system. Then after "cloning," take single hard drive off line. Its contents should be on the RAID, structuring it, etc.; so that it is not needed. This advice seems particularly helpful if your are installing an operating system, it seems to me; but perhaps there is a kernel of wisdom in it that could be useful to you. I do not know--just trying to help. Good luck . . .

Tim