Debian – Software RAID 1 on Debian: GRUB Cursor Blinking

debiandebian-lenny

I have two 500GB drives, and previously I had XP installed and Debian. 6 months ago I replaced one of the drives, and only XP survived. But that's okay. I cleaned up the mess.

I need to setup the Debian again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMyfljiCz3A
This is the reference video… Now I am trying to install Debian 5.0.5 Lenny.

Anyhow. There are four main partitions prior to the Debian installation: 1 for XP, 65GB is reserved for Debian, and 2 others for file storage.

I parted the 65GB for Debian, had a very similar setup (almost identical) as shown in that youtube video.

The setup went fine, but I could not boot from GRUB. I don't see the grub menu at all. I was left hanging with GRUB _ a blanking cursor.

I tried out with the resuce mode using the Debian CD 1:

shell#: cat /proc/mdstat

md1: active raid 1 sad10[0] sdb10[1]
55472320 blocks [2/2 ][UU]
md0: active raid 1 sad7[0] sdb7[1]
120384 blocks [2/2 ][UU]

shell#: mdadm –detail /dev/md0 (i can do it for md1 as well)

number major minor raidDevice state
0 8 7 0 active sync /dev/sda7
1 8 23 1 active sync /dev/sdb7

I am now in rescue mode, what should I do?
Thank you

edited:

shell#: df -h

/dev/mapper/acm_main-root Mounted on /
/dev/md0 Mounted on /boot
/dev/mapper/acm_main-home Mounted on /home
/dev/mapper/acm_tmp-tmp Mounted on /tmp
/dev/mapper/acm_main-usr Mounted on /usr
/dev/mapper/acm_main-var Mounted on /var
tmpfs Mounted on /dev

Anyone has a thought on this? At least I have to get back to Windows…..
Any help is appreciated!

By the way, grub command is not found in the rescue mode…

Best Answer

You likely need to setup grub on both disks since you're in RAID-1. If your rescue disk does not have grub, I suggest downloading and burning Knoppix on a CD and boot from that. Run the following once all is booted:

# grub
grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> root (hd1,0)
grub> setup (hd1)

Your output should be similar to below:

# grub

    GNU GRUB  version 0.95  (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

 [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.  For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
   completions of a device/filename.]

grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xfd

grub> setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  15 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+15 p (hd0,0)/boot/grub/stage2
/boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
Done.

grub> root (hd1,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xfd

grub> setup (hd1)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd1)"...  15 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd1) (hd1)1+15 p (hd1,0)/boot/grub/stage2
/boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
Done.

grub> quit

After that, you should be able to get past the blinking cursor. Hope this helps!

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