I'm trying to set up Fedora Core 5 on an ASUS A8R-MVP with two SATA II 250 GB drives in RAID 0 configuration (using the onboard ULi RAID controller).

I let FC set up the partitions in the default manner:

/dev/sda1 = 100 MB ext3 /boot partition
The rest of the 500 GB in an extended partition (spanning both /dev/sda and /dev/sdb) containing two logical partitions
LogVol00 = 480 GB ext3 / partition
LogVol01 = 20 GB swap partition

GRUB was installed in the MBR (on /dev/sda)

The default boot configuration was set to the root partition (/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00)

When FC5 finished installing and I rebooted, GRUB _ was displayed on the screen (with the underscore cursor blinking). Anything I would type (including the Esc key) would do nothing.

Here is the grub.conf file contents:
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp.img

Using Ctrl+Alt+Del to boot into the FC5 rescue mode, I entered the GRUB shell and tried a manual install to (hd0):
grub> root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0)
Checking if “/boot/grub/stage1” exists… no
Checking if “/grub/stage’” exists… yes
Checking if “/grub/stage2” exists… yes
Checking if “/grub/e2fs_stage1_5” exists… yes
Running “embed /grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)”… 15 sectors are embedded. succeeded
Running “install /grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+15 p (hd0,0)/grub/stage2 /grub/grub.conf… succeeded
Done.

After rebooting, I got:
GRUB Loading stage 1.5.


GRUB loading, please wait…
Error 17

This looks like it can’t mount the partition.

I've tried several different options including instructing the FC5 installer install GRUB into the first sector of the boot partition (/dev/sda1) instead of the MBR, changing the partition setup to eliminate the extended partition and set up 3 primary partitions, trying a whole different distribution (SuSE 10.1) with various configurations (including LILO) but nothing gets me any closer. This is my first foray into Linux, so any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Hi

This may not cure your entire problem, but I noted that your grub configuration file shows this:

The grub configuration file is generally in the boot directory, so on all of my grub config files the entry would look like this:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.16-1.2054_FC5smp ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp.img

This may be what you already have or it may not be needed on VolGroup configurations (I don't use VolGroup). Just thought I would mention it as a thought.

Bob

Paths in GRUB are relative to the root directory of the /boot partition. If /boot is part of the root partition you need the full path /boot/<whatever> but if /boot is its own partition as it is in this case, the OP's setup is correct.

The issue more likely is that GRUB doesn't know how to talk to the RAID controller. I did a little googling but couldn't find much on this. If you could post the exact make and model of the motherboard RAID controller, that would probably help. Incidentally, this is why even on RAID servers I prefer to have /boot on a small, non-RAID hard drive.

Adding "/boot" didn't seem to change anything. I think it is not needed because I have a dedicated /boot partition.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Sorry Tim, I didn't see your post before my reply. The RAID controller is provided by the ULi M1575 south bridge on the motherboard. I did some searches through Google Linux before and didn't come up with anything either.

To btmiller...

Thanks, I have learned something. Have never used a boot partition, so this is helpful.

Bob

Umm, I'm no expert on this, but once I had trouble, when the LVM-module was not loaded at the right time...