[syslinux] extlinux issue

[BuraphaLinux Server]

Hello,

I will try these things on the next site visit, which should be in
about a month.  I had not considered that the mbr might be 100% blank,
since the machine was running another distribution before we
installed.  However, I did change the RAID in the BIOS which may have
wiped/scrambled the mbr.  Thank you for your insights, and after I
test that theory I will post to the list either way my results.  We
upgraded all firmware that was in the HP Firmware Update CD 8.20 since
I posted last time, and there was a BIOS and a RAID firmware update,
but they didn't help for this issue.  The mbr issue sounds most
likely.  For now we installed grub2 (very hard to install) as a
temporary solution which works, so the hardware is probably ok and I
just didn't rewrite the mbr after the RAID change.  For us, the entire
first disk is called /dev/cciss/c0d0.  We did try with just menu.c32,
but that changed nothing, probably since we never got to run it with
no mbr.  We normally are using ext3 filesystems, but tried ext2 and it
didn't make any change.

Thank you for you help, and sorry I cannot test things immediately
since I have to wait for the next scheduled site visit.

JGH


On 4/8/10, Jernej Simončič <jernej.listsonly at ena.si> wrote:
> On Thursday, April 8, 2010, 4:02:24, Gene Cumm wrote:
>
>> Your scenario reminds me something I have seen so I feel the need to
>> ask the extremely obvious.  I've seen systems behave this exact way,
>> stared at a blank screen, sometimes with a blinking cursor and it
>> would frustrate me, only to find out that it had blank data in the MBR
>> boot code.  Have you verified that it does have valid boot code in the
>> MBR?  Using a hexeditor or something like hexdump can easily help to
>> quickly see if it's got anything but 0's.  Any time I've initialized
>> drives on any RAID controller, the resultant target disk seen from the
>> OS is completely blank.
>
> If you use extlinux, it's safe to simply do cat
> /usr/share/syslinux/mbr.bin > /dev/<your_disk> (don't remember what
> exactly the cciss device name is, just make sure it's the drive
> device, not a partition).
>
> --
> < Jernej Simončič ><><><><>< http://eternallybored.org/ >
>
> In any household, junk accumulates to fill the space available for its
> storage.
>        -- Boston's Irreversible Law of Clutter
>
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