Suse 9 Hangs at "GRUB _" prompt

nova_9* · 02-16-2010, 01:46 PM

Hello All,

I'm having trouble booting a Dell PowerEdge 6650 Server running Suse 9 (RAID 5). Following the POST detection of firmware, processor, raid, etc., it displays:

------------
One logical drive found on host adapter
One logical drive handled by BIOS
GRUB _
------------

It will sit at the "GRUB _" prompt with a flashing cursor and will not boot to the OS.
It's not a typical "grub>" prompt and I'm unable to type anything or ESC from it.

Any help would be appreciated,

Thanks

pixellany · 02-16-2010, 01:52 PM

I think we'll need some history and context. For example, when did it last work correctly and what was done --or what happened-- since it last worked?

Can you boot up from a Linux Live CD? ---if so, you can try re-installing GRUB and or editing the config file.

nova_9* · 02-16-2010, 02:53 PM

There has been no upgrades or updates performed. This is a server with no support for the OS (SLES 9, Patchlevel 2, current being 4). We've since migrated this server to a RHEL 5.4 server, however it still hosts a Dell Power Vault 132 tape library. We rebooted the server early last week and were able to ping the server after it came up, until recently. I can't recall if I rebooted again or the server somehow ended up in this state on it's own.

PTrenholme · 02-16-2010, 03:27 PM

First, your problem has nothing to do with your OS - GRUB is failing before your OS is even loaded.

The GRUB_ is typically seen when GRUB fails, for some reason, to load its stage one file from the boot partition. Since you have a RAID setup, I suspect that your problem is an attempt to boot from a RAID drive. I believe GRUB 2 may support RAID boots, but older GRUBs do not.

See if you can boot your system from a GRUB installed on a removable device (USB memory stick, CD, etc.). If that works, then you're using a GRUB version that doesn't support RAID boots, and you need to try GRUB 2 or some other boot loader.

nova_9* · 02-17-2010, 12:28 PM

We've rebooted this server several times in the past with no issues. Wouldn't this have occurred in prior reboots if the booting from RAID 5 or an unsupported boot loader was the cause?
I was able to boot to the Suse9 Disk 1 and selected the 'Rescue System' option which brought me to the Rescue Login. When I do a df -h to verify the files are written to RAM disit only shows the following:
Filesystem Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 90% /
tmpfs 0% /dev/shm

When referring to the Suse Rescue System documentation it recommends 2 options,
1. Mount the root partitions to /mnt with the following command:
Rescue:~#mount /dev/sda3 (or whatever root partition) /mnt
I tried #mount /dev/sda /mnt (then it prompted me to specify file system type, but I don't see any sda filesystems in fstab.

Per Manual..."If the root filesystem is damaged, you will not be able to mount it to /mnt. In this case start e2fsck or other..." If I need to run this, what switches are recommended?

2. Reinstall the boot loader.
Rescue:~#chroot /mnt (my results, "chroot: cannot run cmd '/bin/bash':no such file or directory".

I noticed in the boot log during the loading of the rescue system,
"unable to seek on /dev/sda"

Any ideas?

Thanks

PTrenholme · 02-19-2010, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nova_9*

We've rebooted this server several times in the past with no issues. Wouldn't this have occurred in prior reboots if the booting from RAID 5 or an unsupported boot loader was the cause?

Yes, so that's not the problem.

Quote:

I was able to boot to the Suse9 Disk 1 and selected the 'Rescue System' option which brought me to the Rescue Login. When I do a df -h to verify the files are written to RAM disit only shows the following:
Filesystem Use% Mounted on
/dev/root 90% /
tmpfs 0% /dev/shm

Well, that's for the RAM disk file system, not your server's file system.

Quote:

When referring to the Suse Rescue System documentation it recommends 2 options,
1. Mount the root partitions to /mnt with the following command:
Rescue:~#mount /dev/sda3 (or whatever root partition) /mnt
I tried #mount /dev/sda /mnt (then it prompted me to specify file system type, but I don't see any sda filesystems in fstab.

So what do you see in your /etc/fstab? I.e., the one on the system you're trying to get to boot, not the rescue disk's file system, which is of no particular interest.

Quote:

Per Manual..."If the root filesystem is damaged, you will not be able to mount it to /mnt. In this case start e2fsck or other..." If I need to run this, what switches are recommended?

None. Run it interactively and don't make any change you don't understand.

Quote:

2. Reinstall the boot loader.
Rescue:~#chroot /mnt (my results, "chroot: cannot run cmd '/bin/bash':no such file or directory".

Probably because your RAID array is mounted under /dev/md or wherever md defaults to mounting them.

Quote:

I noticed in the boot log during the loading of the rescue system,
"unable to seek on /dev/sda"

Any ideas?

Yes, either the rescue disk is not running the program to mount your RAID array, or you've got a failed drive in the array. (Note that I have never used RAID, nor a server, so I may be off-base here.)

Boot the rescue Linux and try a fdisk -l to see what devices are available. If any of them look like the server's root file system, do the mount /dev/... /mnt to mount that file system at /mnt in the rescue system's file system. Then do a ls /mnt to see if you've mounted the right thing. (Note that, generally speaking, you will want to mount some partition defined on a disk (e.g., /dev/sda1). An attempt to mount /dev/sda is an attempt to mount a device without a partition table, and that usually only works for floppy disks.