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How to fix Fedora 16 boot problem when using RAID

November 30th, 2011 Leave a comment Go to comments

If you use mdraid (Linux’ software RAID) and you want to install Fedora 16 with /boot, / and swap each in a RAID1 setup your box may not boot once the installation is finished. First go read bugzilla bug 750794 to understand what seems to be happening and why your box with shiny new Fedora 16 may not boot. Here is what I had to do to fix this problem. When you see the “Congratulations…” message at the end of the installation do not reboot. Instead go to the console (alt-f2) and do the following:

1. add the RAID modules to the grub2 environment

# echo 'GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES="raid mdraid09 mdraid1x"' >> /etc/default/grub

2. generate a new grub2 config

# grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

3. install grub2 again on both your RAID1 disks. Replace sda & sdb with your devices!!!

# grub2-install /dev/sda
# grub2-install /dev/sdb

Your box should now properly boot. If it does, enjoy your new Fedora 16 installation!

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  1. Andrew James
    January 11th, 2012 at 08:51 | #1
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    To install grub, grub2 from rescue/restore you may need to bind mount some virtual filesystems, the /proc, /dev, /sys. Sorry I lost the resource that helped sucessful restore in the past. Search to restore grub, grub2.

    like Patrick’s example

    mount –bind /proc /mnt/sysimage/proc
    … …
    … …

  2. Andrew James
    January 11th, 2012 at 08:53 | #2
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    @Andrew James
    oh, yeah, you need to mount the virutal filesystems before you chroot. You mount them from the active operating rescue restore system to the filesystem system partition that needs repair.

  3. Chris
    February 3rd, 2012 at 08:47 | #3
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    Nice how to thanks

  4. Harry
    February 18th, 2012 at 17:36 | #4
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    Your blog post was a life saver!

    My FC16 install failed to boot for two reasons:

    1) New FUJITSU server box had RAID set in the disk controllers, needed to disable this and set controllers to “native” mode
    2) FC16 installation media corrupted RAID grub install, per bugzilla bug 750794 cited in your blog

    After reading your post, I did the following:
    1) Boot off FC16 install media and selected RESCUE mode
    2) Issue “chroot /mnt/sysimage”
    3) echo ‘GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES=”raid mdraid09 mdraid1x”‘ >> /etc/default/grub
    4) grub2-install /dev/sda
    5) grub2-install /dev/sdb
    6) Reboot

    …and yowser–the system restarted, the grub menu popped up and automatically selected the correct boot image!

    Many tnx–you rule, dude!

    P.S. Oddly enough, the procedure on FedoraProject.Org to address this known problem didn’t work
    http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F16_bugs#Cannot_boot_with_.2Fboot_partition_on_a_software_RAID_array

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