GRUB install fails

[chartguy]

Okay, I'm a total Ubuntu novice, so I apologize in advance if this is a stupid question.

I assembled a two-CPU (16 core) AMD system, with 32 GB of RAM. It has four 1TB drives. Anyway, I put Ubuntu 11.04 (64-bit) on a USB stick.

It boots fine off the USB key, but when I try to install to hard disk, I get

Unable to install GRUB in /dev/sda
Executing 'grub-install/dev/sda' failed.
This is a fatal error.

I've tried several times, and that's how it always ends.

Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to be doing something else, differently?

[oldfred]

Welcome to the forums.

Do you have RAID or LVM? Or were drives ever in a RAID set? That can interfere with grub.

Also do you have a BIOS that locks boot sector/MBR?
BIOS & disable "Boot Sector Virus Protection"
Other BIOS settings - Security or locked down Boot sector, Bitlocker

Have you installed and the error is from the install?

[chartguy]

There is a Promise RAID on the MB. I tried to get it to work, but the Ubuntu sees four individual drives. I seem to have painted myself into a corner.

[oldfred]

Are you still running the RAID?
Also for installing on fakeraid (motherboard raid), this might help you:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaid

Only if you do not want the RAID. But drives may still have internal settings:
Presence1960 on remove old raid setting from HD
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1325650
sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/sda
sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/sdb
Also check BIOS for raid settings
More discusion:
http://wwww.ubuntuforums.org/showthr...38#post9274738

[chartguy]

I'm afraid the FakeRaid page does not exist.

I'll see if I can turn it off, since Ubuntu does not see a single volume, rather four drives, even with RAID turned on.

Thank you!

[Quackers]

I'm afraid the FakeRaid page does not exist.

I'll see if I can turn it off, since Ubuntu does not see a single volume, rather four drives, even with RAID turned on.

Thank you!

If you look at the page that does appear on oldfred's link you will should see other links to what you want.
Isn't Promise hardware raid? Not sure.

[chartguy]

If you look at the page that does appear on oldfred's link you will should see other links to what you want.
Isn't Promise hardware raid? Not sure.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaid
reports "This page does not exist yet. You can create a new empty page, or use one of the page templates."

It is a Tyan S8230GM4NR motherboard.
http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec...&SKU=600000192
It has a Promise RAID controller on the motherboard. The controller appears not to be ready for prime time, so I'm going to try to disable it, and see if that works.

[Quackers]

I take it that you have nothing installed then, as deleting the raid array would destroy anything already on there.

[oldfred]

I know about nothing on RAID.

If you start writing from Ubuntu as separate disks I think you break the RAID. How many of your 4 disks were in the RAID set? If one or more were not then I would use that one for Ubuntu.

From the non-existing link, I found this one that has some info:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto

Install these, you may or may not have some installed on the liveCD, then run boot script.

#Install these before running script:
#Is able to search LVM partitions if the LVM2 package is installed
# ("sudo apt-get install lvm2" in debian based distros)
# Is able to search Linux Software Raid partitions (MD Raids) if
# the "sudo apt-get install mdadm" package is installed.
sudo apt-get install mawk

Boot Info Script courtesy of forum members meierfra & Gert Hulselmans
Page with instructions and download:
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/
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[YesWeCan]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaid
reports "This page does not exist yet. You can create a new empty page, or use one of the page templates."

It is a Tyan S8230GM4NR motherboard.
http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec...&SKU=600000192
It has a Promise RAID controller on the motherboard. The controller appears not to be ready for prime time, so I'm going to try to disable it, and see if that works.

This looks like a real hardware RAID controller: http://www.tyan.com/manuals/AMDSP510...Guide_v100.pdf
It would be nice to use it.