9.10, grub2 and raid - what is going on?

[ed-koala]

I tried upgrading my PC to 9.10 using a fresh CD install. I have 2 hard drives raid configured, and when 9.10 showed that during install, I thought "how nice!" ... sadly, nice it wasn't. Using the ext4 filesystem, trying to install 9.10 on my raid setup resulted in a grub error 2.

I can't find any info as to what this error means. Changing the partitioning to non-raid (2 separate drives) got rid of the error 2 ... but gave me a grub error 17.

What's the story with Grub2, ext4 and raid? And can *anyone* tell me what error 2 is? Lastly, what settings might get my PC able to boot? 9.04 with ext3 is fine, but I'd like to upgrade and also get the most out of a nice system, so I need to figure this out before I upgrade.

[jalm111]

I get the same thing.

My install was working fine and could boot, than I put windows on another partition thinking I could dual boot like I have many times before... well no more. Grub2 is so damn obfuscated, it is nothing like the legacy grub where things were actual simple and made sense.

I tried doing grub root (hd0,0) setup (hd0) and I get the Error 2 Bad file or directory type.

Next I tried going grub-install /dev/sda
/dev/sda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.

Than I tried grub-install /dev/mapper/pdc_dfjdddjgid
expr: non-numeric argument
/dev/mapper/pdc_dfjdddjgid1 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.

What in the world is going on? I'm out of ideas ](*,). 9.10 has made my life a royal PITA in the past couple days.

Luke

fdisk -l
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: ignoring extra data in partition table 5
Warning: invalid flag 0xfefe of partition table 5 will be corrected by w(rite)

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00009df8

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 12158 97659103+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 12159 12282 996030 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 12283 64499 419433052+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 64500 83622 153600000 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 ? 278459 544760 2139062143 fe LANstep

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table

[iankellogg]

At one point I was able to install 9.04 and then upgrade with raid, still unable to install directly from 9.10 with raid.

Big problem with just upgrading though (drivers for my tv tuners refuse to work correctly after upgrade even after recompile) So installing directly into 9.10 is the only option, but I can not get the system to work at all.

[ed-koala]

I found, after much experimenting and research, that I had to use the alternate install CD for my AMD 64 system, and install using the nodmraid option.

I suppose I could set up raid afterword using raid tools (madam or something like that), but it sounds a bit steep for my skill set and really isn't all that vital to me, so I just went with a non raid setup.

[darkod]

You are right about the Alternate CD, but I'm not so sure about nodmraid option. Don't think you can create raid later, isn't the point of raid that for changes you need to reformat/recreate partitions?
As for alternate cd, ubuntu website clearly says for LVM and/or RAID use Alternate Install CD. That should have option to recognize your raid that you have created in advance (I mean the array, not partitions).