Topic: Raid-1 Primary Master drive won't boot

[BobWilliams]

My Raid-1 Primary Master drive won't boot, just hangs in the CMOS screen. I have to select the "D" drive in CMOS to boot from. Anyone know how to restore the Boot sector info on Raid-1 drive? I repartitioned it and formatted and it was added successfully to the Raid-1 array but still no boot-up.

Bob...

[mbachmann]

Has it rebuilded the array?

raidhotad, raidhotremove, mdadm and lsraid are some commands to look at,

/proc/mdstat
/etc/raidtab
/etc/fstab

are the places to look at.

[BobWilliams]

Thanks for the reply. Yes the Raid array rebuilt and is running normally. It just won't boot from that drive. I'll try your suggestions.

Bob...

[mbachmann]

And i remember an issue with lilo.conf. You already started this thread but i don't know if you've read the last thing i answered.

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=23859.0

[raem]

Bob

I had that same problem just recently. I did this to fix it:

Reboot the server using the floppy boot disk, preferably created on the server you are fixing.

Log in as root.
Edit /etc/lilo.conf and change line 14 (or thereabouts) from
default=vmlinuz
to
default=Mitel-SME-up

Where you have the applicable system this setting should be
default=Mitel-SME-smp

Save your changes

At the command prompt type
lilo

You should see the following output
Added Mitel-SME-smp
Added Mitel-SME-up *

Remove the floppy boot disk and reboot your server.
Your server should now start up correctly


Here's a good lilo.conf (RAID1) for you to compare.

#------------------------------------------------------------
# BE CAREFUL WHEN MODIFYING THIS FILE! It is updated automatically
# by the SME server software. A few settings are altered by the
# template processing of the file and white space is removed,
# but otherwise changes to the file are preserved.
#
# For more information, see http://www.e-smith.org/custom/ and
# the template fragments in /etc/e-smith/templates/etc/lilo.conf/.
#
# copyright (C) 2002 Mitel Networks Corporation
#------------------------------------------------------------
prompt
timeout=50
boot=/dev/md0
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
message=/boot/mitel.pcx
linear
default=Mitel-SME-up
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-18.7smp
        label=Mitel-SME-smp
        initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-18.7smp.img
        read-only
        root=/dev/md1
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-18.7
        label=Mitel-SME-up
        initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.20-18.7.img
        read-only
        root=/dev/md1

[BobWilliams]

Thanks for the info RayMitchell. The server does boot up if I change the CMOS to boot from the "D" drive because both Raid-1 hard drives are bootable. I want to rewrite the "C" drive Master Boot record so that both drives are bootable again.

Bob...

[raem]

Bob

> I want to rewrite the "C" drive Master Boot record so that both drives are bootable again.

That's what happens when you issue the lilo command !!!
It's no use issuing the lilo command though, if lilo.conf is not correct, that's why I said to check/fix lilo.conf first !!!