[SLE] GRUB/RAID/Root Partition problem

From: Ryan Williams (ryan_at_jimmyether.com)
Date: 02/07/05

  • Next message: Thies Eggers: "Re: [SLE] boot freeze and black screen"
    Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2005 13:29:34 -0500
    To: suse-linux-e@suse.com
    
    

    Background:
    I am running SuSE 9.1 on a dual boot system with XP Home.
    Partitions are as follows between two 120GB drives:
    /dev/md0 125.0GB MD Raid
    /dev/hda 111.7GB WD1200JB-00EVA0
    /dev/hda1 48.8GB HPFS/NTFS
    /dev/hda2 62.9GB Extended
    /dev/hda5 2.0GB Linux swap
    /dev/hda6 25.6GB Linux native
    /dev/hda7 35.1GB Linux RAID
    /dev/hdb 111.7GB WD1200JB-00EVA0
    /dev/hdb1 89.8GB Linux RAID
    /dev/hdb2 21.9GB Win95 FAT32 LBA

    Last night after moving the computer's location, SuSE locked up on load.
    After waiting about 10 minutes, I restarted. GRUB came up fine and
    started booting into SuSE, but I was taken to the command line prompt
    which said something like fsck could not run and that I must manually
    correct the issue. So, I put in the SuSE install disc 1 and ran "Repair
    Installed System" from the installer. It found errors with md0, which it
    claimed to repair (on both hda7 and hdb1). Then, when checking the GRUB
    boot loader record, it first claimed "No valid root partition was
    found". I hit "retry" and it proceeded on to tell me "boot loader error
    detected". I hit "repair" and it came up with a proposed boot loader
    setup. I hit "finish" and got the following error:

    grub> root (null)
    Error 23: Error while parsing number
    grub> install --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2/d(hd0)/0x8000(null)/
    Error 12: Invalid device requested
    grub> quit

    After that, GRUB kept giving me errors and wouldn't let me log into
    Linux (I could still get into XP though). So, I went back through and
    tried LILO. The boot loader then worked, but on SuSE load it's exiting
    to a shell and saying the following:

    Waiting for device /dev/0 to appear: .....not found -- device nodes:

    then on down

    No root device found; exiting to /bin/sh

    Now, I should probably just try to install from scratch. Here's the
    thing though. I have around 100GB of data on the RAID partitions that I
    need to somehow back up before I reinstall. I've tried starting up from
    the SuSE LIVE CD, but it doesn't seem to give me access to mount any of
    the partitions. So, I also started up from Knoppix. It does allow me to
    mount all the partitions EXCEPT hda7 and hdb1, which are the drives in
    the RAID array which I need to get to. It keeps saying something like
    "no valid file system found or was not supplied".

    Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do to get to the data
    on the partitions? I have a third drive I could install and move the
    files to for backup before rebuilding the linux system, but I first need
    to figure out how to either fix the situation with the root device not
    being found so I can finally boot SuSE from the disc OR mount the md0
    RAID partition from Knoppix and move the files to a new drive. Your
    assistance is greatly appreciated.

    Ryan Williams

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  • Next message: Thies Eggers: "Re: [SLE] boot freeze and black screen"

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