I had a perfectly working linux system. (kernel 2.4.18-4)

1. I installed a new drive (removed all linux drives) and installed windows 98.

2. hooked the linux drives back to the system and booted linux, no problems. linux drive 1 (primary/master) windows drive (primary/slave) linux drive 2 (secondary/master)

3. added the following to the grub.conf

title Windows 98
map (hd0,0) (hd1,0)
map (hd1,0) (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

4. restarted the computer and loaded the new selection in GRUP (version 0.91) Windows loaded without a problem.

5. restarted the computer and loaded linux. Got the following error

EXT3-fs: unable to read superblock
EXT2-fs: unable to read superblock
isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=09:00, iso_blknum=16, block=32
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 09:00

6. Tried removing the windows drive and booting again, same problem. That's it.

the only other information I can think of is the system is running a software raid on the two master drives for linux only. windows shouldn't have seen them, and shouldn't have done anything to them. anyway, please help. Thank you.

hi ziddle,

grub counts through your drives, so if you add a primary slave the number of your secondary master increases by one. I don't get why

2. hooked the linux drives back to the system and booted linux, no problems. linux drive 1 (primary/master) windows drive (primary/ slave) linux drive 2 (secondary/master)

worked, but I think you should check the entry in grub used to load linux. If you use a raid configuration both disks can be mentionned there and the number of your secondary master must be changed from '(hd1)' to '(hd2)', cause '(hd1)' is now your primary slave.

okay, I've removed the windows drive and the system is back to it's original state. Linux isn't booting... (same error as listed above)

I ran the rescue on the boot CD, was able to mount the boot partition, but unable to mount the raid root partition. Got error "invalid argument". From the Rescue command line I created a directory "root" and then ran

#mount /dev/md0 /root

got error,
mount: Mounting /dev/md0 on /root failed: Invalid argument

Partition configuration
/dev/hda1 /boot
/dev/hda2 / (software raid0)
/dev/hda3 swap (software raid0)
/dev/hdc1 / (software raid0)
/dev/hdc2 swap (software raid0)

#ls /proc/ide
drivers hda hdc hdd ide0 ide1 via

-----grub.conf
defalut=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.18-4)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-4 ro root=/dev/md0
title Windows 98
map (hd0,0) (hd1,0)
map (hd1,0) (hd0,0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

I have since removed the new drive making the Windows 98 section invalid.. so lets ignore windows, and see if we can get linux working again.. It looks like something happened to the raid.

Any thoughts? Thank you.