8.04 - Grub Error 15 After Installation (mdadm raid)

[iissmart]

Hello all,

I'm having some issues getting Ubuntu 8.04LTS (Desktop) to install on my system. This system will be used as a file server, so there are multiple disks connected to it which will be configured in a RAID array using MDADM (software raid). Here is my current setup/partitions:


IDE3 master (hde) - 40GB
#1 primary 40GB raid
IDE4 master (hdg) - 20GB
#1 primary 20GB raid
SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 160GB
#1 primary 160GB raid
SCSI1 (0,1,0) (sdb) - 200GB
#1 primary 160GB raid
#2 primary 40GB raid
SCSI2 (0,0,0) (sdc) - 61.5GB
#1 primary 20GB raid
#2 primary 2.0GB swap
#3 primary 32.0MB (megabytes) ext2 /boot (bootable flag on)
#4 primary 39.5GB ext3 /
SCSI2 (0,1,0) (sdd) - 80GB
#1 primary 80GB raid
SCSI2 (0,0,0) (sde) - 80GB
#1 primary 80GB raid

This was the best layout I could come up with, given the hard drives I have. Let me explain. Basically on sdc it will have 2GB swap, 32MB /boot, and 40GB / directories. Now through matching of common sizes, the rest of the partitions (marked as 'raid') will be paired up as RAID-1's. That is, from high to low:

sda1 & sdb1 (160GB)
sdd1 & sde1 (80GB)
hde1 & sdb2 (40GB)
hdg1 & sdc1 (20GB)
So as you can see, after configuring the RAID's through MDADM, these will be mounted as /raid160, /raid80, /raid40, and /raid20.

But onto my issues. I was originally using the alternate installer for Ubuntu 8.04 (i386), however after partitioning, formatting the software raids through the alternate installer, and installing, I rebooted to a "GRUB Error 15" message. So I decided to put off configuring the RAID's until after I get the OS bootable, to simplify things. So now I'm just worrying about /boot, /, and swap. Still, Error 15. So I tried the normal graphical installer. Same thing.

One thing that I'm not sure about is how I have my boot order set up in BIOS. With this complex of a RAID situation (to me, at least), I basically went though each boot option until it started doing something. The BIOS only gives me a generic list of options (SCSI, HDD-1, HDD-2, FLOPPY, etc..), so it ended up being HDD-1 which seems to start loading GRUB then stops with Error 15.

I'm also not 100% sure I'm getting up the boot partition/grub stuff correctly. During the graphical install I went to Advanced options and set it to install grub onto sdc3, the /boot partition, and I have the bootable flag enabled for that partition as well. Is that right? I don't remember seeing anything in the alternate installer to pick where to install grub.

I need to get this box set up ASAP, so any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[iissmart]

Any ideas as to why it might be happening?

[iissmart]

Well I deleted all the raid partitions for now so I only have a 32MB /boot, 2GB swap, and 40-something GB / partitions on sdd. Installed grub to sdd1 (the 32MB /boot) during the standard Desktop install.

Except now it reboots to GRUB error 22. Help?

[caljohnsmith]

Well I deleted all the raid partitions for now so I only have a 32MB /boot, 2GB swap, and 40-something GB / partitions on sdd. Installed grub to sdd1 (the 32MB /boot) during the standard Desktop install.

Except now it reboots to GRUB error 22. Help?
So which drive are you booting on start up? Also, if you installed Grub to the partition boot sector of sdd1, then the Grub error you are getting must be from a previously installed Grub in the MBR of whichever drive you are booting on start up. Can you set your sdd drive to boot on start up? If you can, then how about doing the following to install Grub to the MBR of sdd to hopefully get sdd booting OK:

sudo grub
grub> root (hd3,0)
grub> setup (hd3)
grub> quit
Then reboot, set your BIOS to boot the sdd drive, and you should at least get a Grub menu on start up if all goes well. It might be that booting the OSes from the Grub menu will result in an error, but that's usually not a big deal at all to fix. Let me know how it goes.

[iissmart]

I think I got it to work, kind of. I had been booting with "HDD-1" in the BIOS because it was the first one that didn't say "INVALID SYSTEM DISK", but when I switched it to HDD-2 it started booting grub. But none of the menu options worked. So I switched it to do "root (hd0,0)" (I think, I can't check right now...keep reading) and it finally booted into Ubuntu. However, after installing the 200-something updates, including a new kernel (which I was hoping would set the grub issues straight when it did the update-grub command), I filled up the 32MB /boot partition, which I thought would have been enough. So the kernel update returned an error because that partition is full, so update-grub never actually happened. Now I'm booted into a gparted livecd and moving all my partitions to the right so I can expand my /boot partition to 180MB, which I hope is enough. And now gparted is saying there are read errors on the disk as it tried to move the partitions to the right...

And for the record, I had been doing lots of googling and searching these forums for similar issues, but every time I ran "find /boot/grub/stage1" at a grub prompt it said "Error 15: File not found"...

So once I get enough space added to the /boot partition, I'll reboot and let you know how that goes. Thanks for the response!

[Edit] In case it wasn't clear, I re-ordered the partitions on the boot disk, so that /boot was first, then swap, then the / partition.

[iissmart]

Seems to be booting fine now, however I keep having to edit the boot line in grub because it's trying to use "root (hd5,0)" when it should be (hd0,0). How can I save the change I make to this line?

[psusi]

Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst

[iissmart]

Oh, duh sorry that was a stupid question. However, I noticed its not mounting the swap partition now. So I tried "mkswap /dev/sdd2", which outputs a new UUID, then I put that in /etc/fstab as the swap partition, and did "swapon -a", however it says "Cannot canonicalize/stat" for the new rule. I've never had to deal with swap before, so I'm not really sure what I'm doing :confused: