[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Rescue mode: cannot fix boot after raid1 repair



List, good afternoon,

We had a raid 1 failure on our (one remaining) Lenny system this morning, /dev/sda failed, and I've replaced it with a new disk, which is unformatted and unpartitioned at the moment. We're unable to boot from the second (original) disk in the machine, /dev/sdb. Guessing that /dev/sdb doesn't have a boot record (MBR), I tried rescue mode from a Squeeze install CD, with the intention of (?re-)installing Grub but I haven't found grub on either our existing root filesystem or in the installer rescue system. I've also tried various 'rescue' and 'boot' CDs but we couldn't get those to load the root filesystem.

/dev/sdb is partitioned:
sdb1: /boot2 (this was a simple copy of /boot on /dev/sda1; sda1 and sdb1 were not raid)
sdb2: (raid1) /
sdb3: (raid1) /usr
sdb4: (raid1) /var
sdb5: swap
sdb6: (raid1) /tmp
sdb7: (raid1) /home
sdb8: (raid1) /userdata

Could I ask 3 questions? Is there a way I can check whether there is a correct MBR on /dev/sdb?

Secondly, /boot on /dev/sda1 had been flagged as bootable, so to boot from /dev/sdb1 should I now flag /dev/sdb1 as bootable and, if so, how should I do that from the rescue mode?

Lastly, do I need to run a grub installer and, if so, where ought I be able to find that? I tried running grub-install from both a shell in the root filesystem, and from a shell in the rescue system, but grub-install seemed not to be there. Perhaps the shell needs a 'path' to find it or, even, some other partitions mounted.

I'm a bit lost and would appreciate any guidance. Provided that I can fix the boot, we should be ok because the filesystem still seems to be there and the /userdata is backed up as well.

Ron


Reply to: