Re: [opensuse] RAID 1 10.3 install doesn't boot

Joe Morris wrote:
On 05/07/2008 07:16 PM, Jim Flanagan wrote:
Michael Fischer wrote:
Just got a new box with 2 identical SATA drives.

Followed (as best as my poor eyes could see the screenshots)
the advice given at
http://en.opensuse.org/How_to_install_openSUSE_on_software_RAID

(first time trying the RAID thing)

Everything pretty much went as expected, but the system would
not reboot from the HD(s) at the midpoint of the install.
This sounds like a problem either of grub not being written to the mbr (i.e. md0-4 do not have an mbr). For this to work with raid 1, just make sure you tell Yast which actual drive to write GRUB to, write it to the MBR, and verify that the line in menu.lst says an actual disk, [i.e. root (hd1,4)
which is what mine has], and that the kernel line has the right root line, i.e. root=/dev/md0. Here is what part of mine looks like (md0 is /, which includes /boot, and md1 is /home).
jmorris:/home/joe # cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Tue Feb 12 22:23:05 PHT 2008
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd1,4)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 10.3 - 2.6.22.17-0.1
root (hd1,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.17-0.1-default root=/dev/md0 vga=0x31a resume=/dev/sda1 splash=verbose showopts
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.17-0.1-default


You didn't mention what Raid level you are using,
Check subject.
I put all partitions of this install on MD raid, similar to yours, but I had a problem with /boot not working if it was on an extended partition.
My boot is on the same raid one extended partition as /.
The only way I could get it to work was to make a primary partition for boot (two actually, 1 on each drive, the same size - make the partition first, format it with MD raid later). Then I made an extended partition to for all the other partitions. Then I set up each MD raid, boot on the primary partition, all the rest including swap on the separate extended partitions and all has been working well.

I'm not sure if you have the option to make /boot on a primary, or at least a logical partition or not.
I think his problem is getting GRUB written to the MBR, and then telling grub which INDIVIDUAL disk to read its files from, since it cannot read from md raid until it loads the initrd. To be able to load that, it needs to start off booting from an individual disk. I have read some time ago newer versions of grub can read directly from an md device, but I have never seen it in action.

As I stated my install is reading /boot on /dev/MD0 with no problems. But it would not work if /dev/MD0 was on an extended partition, it would only work on a primary partition (but I suspect a logical partition would work as well).

Jim F
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