On Thu, Apr 12, 2007 at 05:23:57PM -0700, Michael Armida wrote: > I am having a problem with the Debian installer whereby I can't get my > machine to find the GRUB loader. This is probably a problem with my > motherboard (asus m2n sli deluxe), and not so much the installer per se, > but please let me know if you see away around this.
I have the same board. No windows. > > I've got four drives in my machine, sdc and sdd are a "hardware" RAID > via the nvidia controller running vista 64. sda and sdb are laid out > for a software raid via md like this: > That 'hardware' raid is not, so as far as linux goes, its separate disks. > sda1, sdb1: ext3 at /boot > sda2, sdb2: lvm on raid for everything else (swap included) > > At the end of the install process, GRUB gets installed into the MBR and > the installer correctly ids Vista's presence, but on reboot, I end up > right back in Vista. I checked out my BIOS and RAID options, and here's > a summary of the limitations: > > - BIOS only allows for me to pick between things like "Hard drives," > "CDROM," "Floppy," and order they're tried in. > Thats the boot device priority (page 4-37 in your manual). Under hard disk drives, you can also change the order of hard drives (p 438). Unfortunatly I can't run the bios and send this email :) At boot up, you can also hit F8 to get a boot menu of the drives it finds (useful to boot from a USB stick that wasn't attached when you did the bios setup). Also, are you _sure_ that grub got installed? When I installed Etch pre-RC1, it said it did but didn't. I had to boot the installer in rescue mode and choose 'install grub'. Good luck. Doug. > - RAID setup only allows me to pick which of the currently active arrays > to boot from. Since I'm using md, I didn't create an array for sda/sdb, > and therefore only the windows array is available and is always marked > for boot. > > - when in windows and the hardware raid is active, it only sees arrayed > disks. sda and sdb don't even exist to device manager once booted; only > the second array exists. > > I've tried the following: > > 1) originally my windows drives were sda and sdb, I've swapped them in > the hope of being able to boot GRUB when they were first, but it appears > that the RAID controller's boot priority takes precedence. > > 2) I've tried making a second array out of sda and sdb after the debian > installer finished and then marking it for boot, but I just get a BIOS > message about not finding the boot loader. > > 3) if all of the arrays are deleted, it just hangs on a black screen. > I'm guessing this is trying sda and not getting anywhere. > > 4) I've booted into a Knoppix cd and then run 'grub-install > --root-directory=/mnt/sda1 /dev/sda' in the hopes that would hit the MDR > of the first drive, but this doesn't change #3. > > 5) I've tried using EasyBCD in windows to get the vista boot loader to > chain to GRUB, but it doesn't seem to find it. I'm guessing this has to > do with the "windows only sees arrays" observation above. > > Sounds to me like I would optimally like to be able to make the boot > process aware of the nvidia raid and then use GRUB to install to that > (isn't this a bad idea generally? Guides I've read say to avoid the > vendor-specific raid drivers and just stick with pure md). Alternately, > maybe there's a way to get Knoppix to install to the md device instead > of sda or sdb, and somehow get the BIOS to play nice and boot there - > wherein the problem is getting the motherboard to let me choose which > specific device to boot from. > > Any other suggestions for how to solve this would be greatly > appreciated. I'm pretty new to Linux and RAID stuff, so I apologize in > advance for my naivete and need for specifics. > > Thanks, > Michael > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
