machine stops at GRUB screen during boot process
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From: Rahul on 28 Apr 2010 13:00 unruh <unruh(a)wormhole.physics.ubc.ca> wrote in news:slrnhtgmis.biq.unruh(a)wormhole.physics.ubc.ca: Thanks unruh. My bad. I should explain more. > > Sorry, you talk about "this disk" and then you talk about raid, which > implies more than one physical disk. You talk about "raid-bios" but I > do not know wthat that means. There are 3 physical disks in the machine. The server has been running for a long time and when it was running I used to see only one disk from within Linux. The bootup process is confusing. There is a std. machine BIOS. But there is also a "Adaptec SCSI BIOS". Plus a "LSI MegaRAID Controller Utility". Does the last one imply this is a "software RAID?" I am not sure. I did go into the MegaRAID Utility and it shows 3 physical disks and one logical disk using a RAID5. >Is this the abortion known as software > raid contained on many motherboards, which is, as far as I can tell, a > useless piece of junk. I am not sure. How does one tell. I totally agree with you: I'd never do software RAID myself. But this machine is pretty old and not designed by me unfortunately. > You will probably need at least one partition > on one of your disks that is NOT raid. and use that to contain the > /boot directory, so your bios can find the absolute sectors on that > disk and download the second stage grub loader. The plus point is that this was a perfectly running machine till just a few days ago. So I guess whatever setup it had was bootable. Its just that something's broken down or was accidentally changed and I cannot figure out what! > Remember that on bootup, the ONLY thing available is the disk access > software in the bios. It has access to no drivers or any other > software. It can only load absolute disk sectors into memory to run > them. If the boot loader is not at some absolute disk address on one > disk ( and if you use striped raid, it is not) the bios disk reader > cannot do anything. What you say does make sense. But the machine was booting up so far so I am thinking there has to be a way to fix it. Just not sure how. -- Rahul
From: J G Miller on 28 Apr 2010 13:32 On Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 17:00:00h +0000, Rahul wrote: > Its just that something's broken down or was accidentally changed > and I cannot figure out what! What has changed was stated in the original posting -- "I rebooted a machine today (*after a RAID rebuild*)"
From: Rahul on 28 Apr 2010 13:34 J G Miller <miller(a)yoyo.ORG> wrote in news:1272475942_27(a)vo.lu: >> Its just that something's broken down or was accidentally changed >> and I cannot figure out what! > > What has changed was stated in the original posting -- > > "I rebooted a machine today (*after a RAID rebuild*)" That's an external RAID array. If I connect that I can mount it from a rescue CD. So the external RAID rebuild seems to be OK. At this point I've disconnected the external RAID array to simplify the problem. But my boot partition seems to be on this internal drive (which for some reason is the funny MegaRAID business) That drive is just not found. Not even the rescue disk finds that. What's confusing is that during the boot process I see the messages: 1 Logical Drive found on Host Adapter 1 Logical Drive handled by BIOS So, initially the internal drive is seen, but it cannot be seen by the RHEL rescue disk's boot shell. -- Rahul
From: Robert Heller on 28 Apr 2010 14:30 At Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:34:11 +0000 (UTC) Rahul <nospam(a)nospam.invalid> wrote: > > J G Miller <miller(a)yoyo.ORG> wrote in news:1272475942_27(a)vo.lu: > > >> Its just that something's broken down or was accidentally changed > >> and I cannot figure out what! > > > > What has changed was stated in the original posting -- > > > > "I rebooted a machine today (*after a RAID rebuild*)" > > That's an external RAID array. If I connect that I can mount it from a > rescue CD. So the external RAID rebuild seems to be OK. At this point I've > disconnected the external RAID array to simplify the problem. > > But my boot partition seems to be on this internal drive (which for some > reason is the funny MegaRAID business) That drive is just not found. Not > even the rescue disk finds that. *Exactly* what sort of disks are on this internal MegaRAID controller? Are they: SCSI disks (50 or 68 pin ribbon cable(s)) IDE disks (40 (80) pin ribbon cables) SATA disks (separate narrow cables to each disk, no ribbon cables) Do you know *exactly* what make/model of MegaRAID controller it is? Its start up screen *should* tell you something. If nothing else, crack open the case and have a look at the drives & controller board. > > What's confusing is that during the boot process I see the messages: > > 1 Logical Drive found on Host Adapter > 1 Logical Drive handled by BIOS > > So, initially the internal drive is seen, but it cannot be seen by the RHEL > rescue disk's boot shell. > -- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller(a)deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
From: Rahul on 28 Apr 2010 14:43
Robert Heller <heller(a)deepsoft.com> wrote in news:2O2dnbs2uokx40XWnZ2dnUVZ_tudnZ2d(a)posted.localnet: Thanks Robert! > *Exactly* what sort of disks are on this internal MegaRAID controller? SCSI disks for sure. I opened the box. > Do you know *exactly* what make/model of MegaRAID controller it is? > Its start up screen *should* tell you something. If nothing else, > crack open the case and have a look at the drives & controller board. Sure. I'll find that out and post. I have a strong suspicion this has to do with the drivers. Somehow my rescue disk doesn't have the drivers needed to access the MegaRAID. -- Rahul |