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Problem:

Installed SLED/SLES system onto software raided (RAID1) disks and after the install finished the system fails to boot.

Solution:

The problem is that the /boot partition as such should not be raided, in fact it should be traditional Linux primary, it's the old school way.

It's not desired for many administrator simply because in case of a disk failure the system may not boot even though our data and root system is safe. Certainly maintaining a /boot manually on the second disk would be a bit tedious.

Some people create separate RAID1 array for /boot which wouldn't give any advantage over having it on the root FS therefor I present a solution here where we have only 1 root and 1 swap.

Note: you will need to load the official media in and select rescue mode for being able to fix the problem with the provided solution.

My disk config looks like this:

geeko:~ # fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        9729    78148161    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5               1        1306    10490382   fd  Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda6            1307        1568     2104483+  fd  Linux raid autodetect

md0 is sda5 and sdb5 and used for swap
md1 is sda6 and sdb6 and used for /

Start the grub interactive shell:

GNU Manifesto explains the details. In legal terms, GNU software is protected by the GNU General Public License, or GPL, and by the GNU Lesser General Public License, or LGPL. The Linux kernel, which is subject to the GPL, benefits from this project (especially from the tools), but should not be seen as the same thing.">GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
(hd0,6)
(hd1,6)

grub> root (hd0,6)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xfd

grub> setup (hd0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  15 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+15 p (hd0,6)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.

grub> root (hd1,6)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xfd

grub> setup (hd1)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd1)"...  15 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd1) (hd1)1+15 p (hd1,6)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded
Done.

grub> quit

A bit of an explanation:

• You tell grub first to find all disks which includes grub installed on them.
• Then you select the first disk "root (hd0,6)". Note: grub will treat all disks as "hd" regardless it's SATA or SCSI
• Then you install grub to the first disk's first partition "setup (hd0)". You could install it to anywhere, it's just a common approach.
• You do the same for the second disk as well

After all your system should be able to boot and finish the install stage 2. Bear in mind you may need to redo this when you receive a kernel upgrade. (I had to...) I recommend doing this when you see kernel upgrades getting installed before you reboot the system which saves you the rescue mode...

Disclaimer: As with everything else at Cool Solutions, this content is definitely not supported by Novell (so don't even think of calling Support if you try something and it blows up).

It was contributed by a community member and is published "as is." It seems to have worked for at least one person, and might work for you. But please be sure to test, test, test before you do anything drastic with it.