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Old 04-04-2007, 03:15 AM   #1
spectra
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Registered: Nov 2006
Location: UK
Distribution: Debian(s) / Gentoo
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Problem booting with grub + mdadm


Hi guys,

I've recently got a new desktop at work, and i've experienced some headaches getting grub to boot properly. I'll quickly summarise the scenario:

1x 80GB SATA drive (sda)
2x 250GB SATA drives (sdb & sdc)

I have created 2 MD array's on sdb and sdc, they are:

md0 - RAID-1 array, 50GB ext3 partition of sdb and sdc for /
md1 - RAID-1 array, 200GB partition of sdb and sdc for LVM2 with mount points.

The arch is x64, and I am installing Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) x64, with the alternate CD (RAID + LVM) in curses mode. The problem is after I installed Ubuntu, and grub, Linux would fail to boot. After POST and bios, the system does not get as far as grub Stage 1.5. The system says "No bootable device...". I have installed the grub into MBRs of sda, sdb and sdc.

I needed to install the evil Vista on sda, so I did this, and Vista resided on sda1. After this I decided to make a 10GB ext3 partition on sda, sda2 and reinstalled Ubuntu a second time this time using the expert curses installer. This time when the installer got to installing the grub, I installed it into sda's MBR and it automatically detected Vista and my previous root install on md0. Everything now worked, and the root md0 booted. The /boot/grub was being loaded from sda2 however.

Now having a 10GB boot partition i'm sure you'll agree is pretty pointless, and since I had to reinstall Vista (Need 2 NTFS partitions for BitLocker) I deleted sda1. I then created a 1GB ext3 partition on sda1, and copied sda2's boot directory to it, modified my fstab to mount sda1 on /boot, updated the grub using grub and then it all broke again.

Maybe i'm being very stupid here with my grub config, ideally I want grub installed on all 3 MBRs, however I would settle for it just on sda unless someone has a good chain-loading guide for the Windows Boot Loader, in which case the grub on sdb and sdc would be fine. I will attach a copy of my device.map, and how I am going about installing the grub, and my menu.lst for the default entry:

device.map

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb
(hd2) /dev/sdc

menu.lst default entry:

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-11-generic RAID Primary
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/md0 ro quiet nosplash
initrd /initrd.img
savedefault
boot

Syntax used to install GRUB:

grub
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
(exit, update symlink)
root (hd1,0)
setup (hd1)
(exit, update symlink)
root (hd2,0)
setup (hd2)

I am using Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper x64 to get a working environment to install the grub, mounting all relevant locations, then making /boot a symbolic link to the appropriate boot location before running the above. I have a reasonably new Knoppix CD/DVD I can use. If someone can point out where my stupidity lies, that would be most appreciated!
 
Old 04-04-2007, 06:34 AM   #2
spectra
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Registered: Nov 2006
Location: UK
Distribution: Debian(s) / Gentoo
Posts: 30

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Ok I manage to fix it
 
  


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