Hello All,
I am trying to setup a RAID 1 on my system that has 2 identical IDE hard disks. I am installing CentOS 4.2 x64 and doing a software RAID.

This is what my partitioning look like:

/dev/md1 2000MB Swap
/dev/md2 76096MB ext3 /
/dev/hda
hda1 196MB ext3 /boot
hda2 76096MB SoftwareRaid
hda3 2000MB SoftwareRaid
/dev/hdb
hdb1 196MB ext3 /boot2
hdb2 76096MB SoftwareRaid
hdb3 2000MB SoftwareRaid


Okay... When I was googling for help I read on a site that it is not recommended (or not possible, I can't remember now) to create a mirror of the /boot partition. So, that's why I created /boot on my hda1 and had to call it /boot2 on my hdb1 (some temporary name I picked) - originally I had them mirrored and it was called /dev/md0 and I installed centOS and wasn't able to boot successfully. Therefore, I removed the mirroring on those two partitions for now.

Anyways, during the installation(with the above RAID setup) I was given a choice of where to store the boot loader. My options were:
1) Install it on /dev/hda Master Boot Record
2)First sector (or similar wording) of /dev/hda1

I chose the second option /dev/hda1 - Idea was to store the boot record on this partition now and figure out a way to mirror it to my other drive (hdb1 or /boot2).

So, I was hoping that the system should boot normally after the installation with the current setup I have shown above.

Unfortunately, when it booted I see the word Grub and there is a hypen (-) next to that word just flashing... Nothing else is happening.

I need some help!! Could someone please explain to me whether the RAID setup I have is valid?? If so, how can I get the system booted?

If my setup is wrong.. could you please recommend what I should be doing??

Basically, I want a complete RAID 1 setup so if one of my hard disk fails the other one will take over and during a disaster if I have to reboot the system for any reason I want it to be able to boot normaly from the second hard disk upon the failure of the first one.

Any help??? Thanks in advance.

Use your CentOS CD1 and boot into Linuxrescue. From there you can fix your master boot record.

grub

grub>root (hd0,0) ***Sets mbr on both hdd's
grub>setup (hd0)
grub>root (hd1,0)
grub>setup (hd1)
grub>quit