[CentOS] boot failure after install

[Johnny Hughes]

On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 14:02 +0100, Stephen Westrip wrote:
> Dear P.,
> 
> Yes, this has happened EVERY time I have installed CentOS 4.0 (the only 
> version I have ever installed). I also boot up into rescue mode and then 
> issue just one grub command,
> 
> grub-install /dev/i2o/hda (or whatever your device is called)
> 
> This fixes the problem permanently.
> 
> 
> Stephen Westrip
> MetaFour
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Peter Farrow wrote:
> 
> > Dear All,
> >
> > I have recently had a bad experiences with Centos 4.0 and 4.1 when 
> > installing onto mirrored IDE drives using software mirror.
> >
> > The install goes through ok, but when the system comes to reboot, it 
> > seems the boot loader fails.  I've seen fail on the first reboot or 
> > after a random number of reboots, across different hardware as wide 
> > and varied as you can get, the common factor is software raid, 
> > (mirrored drives).
> >
> > It either fails just displaying "GRUB" or fails with a flashing cursor 
> > at the bootup time.
> >
> > Booting a rescue cd, doing a chroot /mnt/sysimage and then the 
> > following grub commands fixes the issue permanently, so that it never 
> > fails again,
> >
> > grub
> >
> > grub-> root (hd0,0)
> > grub-> setup (hd0)
> > grup-> root (hd1,0)
> > grub-> setup (hd1)
> > grub-> quit
> >
> > it seems to me the Anaconda installer doesn't do something quite right 
> > which leads to this random style failure.  Its only random as to when 
> > it will do it, unless you do this, it will do it at some point.....
> >
> > I've been doing Redhat for many years and never seen this problem 
> > before......anybody else seen this
> >
> > P.
> >

Just so you don't think this is a CentOS only issue:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=149587

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=149064

Also ...

Grub does not write to the mirror drive ... which can cause issues.  It
is recommended that you do a grub install (or Peter's solution) on both
drives on your first reboot after a software mirror install. (Or put
something in your ks file to do it post isntall for kickstart).
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