Reinstall 11.1 -> 11.2 = not booting

I have reinstalled my 11.1 to 11.2 and the new version is not booting. I selected install instead of upgrade (to make sure everything will work), but obviously it was a wrong choice.

I’m using software raid (mirror) and the system installs correctly, but simply won’t boot (11.1 worked just fine with exactly the same disk/paritition/raid layout).

Won’t boot = grub starts correctly, after one of the items is selected (both normal and failsafe fail) it prints the boot line (kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz-2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop root=/dev/md1 resume=/dev/md3 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x346) and nothing happens.

md1 is my root, md3 is swap, boot is on separate md0

No hints? I’m getting a bit desperate.

try this:

User fred.blaise{at}gmail{dot}com added comment
http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=548132#c20

OK, I figured it out.

First, the installation does not like having master boot record written to a different disk, then where the /boot resides.

Second the configuration of grub is installed incorrectly (hd0,0) instead of (hd0,1) (actually I have no idea why it is (hd0,1) when grub should be counting from zero).

There’s a section in Release Notes about needing to check where the Boot Loader is writing things. There have been some bugs reported, affecting ppl with previous Linux installs.

I have tested 11.2, with /boot on a different disk to my boot disk, but then I make sure it installs GRUB in the /boot partition, and keeps well out of MBR because that would interfere with the past ‘stable’ installation. I would have had it write Generic MBR, because the disk it install to has Windows Vista & 7 on it. It successfully avoided breaking MS install & boot, which was a main concern for Linux Install on 2nd disk.

Having had to recover my 11.2 install after having thrown an 11.1 on the same disk yesterday, I am thinking an ‘expert mode’ where you can STOP GRUB being installed anywhere, just having Boot loader generate sample menu.lst file would save troubles.

I have tested 11.2, with /boot on a different disk to my boot disk, but then I make sure it installs GRUB in the /boot partition, and keeps well out of MBR

Thats exactly what you can’t do when you are using RAID setup.