[ale] GRUB issue on boot

[Ryan Fish]

I am not looking to bail on GRUB at all.  I just need to get a production web server back online since it has been down for several hours now and I really have no clue where else to look other than where I already have...

More, potentially helpful, background information:

After the last kernel update (2.4.21-37.0.1.EL) the server was rebooted and it came back up fine HOWEVER it would automatically choose to use 2.4.21-32.0.1 instead of the newest kernel.  I wrote it off to something stupid I had possibly done when cleaning out /boot manually instead of using "rpm -e" and figured things would be fine again after installing the latest kernel (2.4.21-40.EL).  However, even though grub.conf looked to be fine and there were no issues with this box while it was running something apparently has gone really wrong...

Thank you.
-Ryan

> 
> From: "Michael B. Trausch" <fd0man at gmail.com>
> Date: 2006/04/13 Thu AM 10:45:03 EDT
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
> Subject: Re: [ale] GRUB issue on boot
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: RIPEMD160
> 
> James Sumners wrote On 04/13/2006 09:39 AM:
> > Install lilo. I don't know why distributions are moving to Grub. I
> > have never seen an installation of it that doesn't screw up at some
> > point. I recently added a kernel switch to the Grub config on my SuSE
> > 10.0 box and it caused my machine to reboot every time Grub started to
> > load. I reinstalled Grub several times and the same thing kept
> > happening. Surprise, surprise, I installed lilo, with a basic config,
> > and I could boot my machine again.
> > 
> 
> That is interesting -- I've been using GRUB for quite some time now, and
> I've never experienced a problem with it unless a drive was dying or
> dead.  It's more flexible and versatile, because it doesn't rely on a
> block-list for a new kernel, and you can edit the command line options,
> and everything about the boot process, before the system even boots.
> You don't even need to reinstall GRUB when you edit the boot script,
> which is one of the strong points behind it.  Also, the GRUB is great
> for when you have several operating systems that you need to boot
> between, and any of them are Multiboot systems.  I've experimented in
> the past with creating OS kernels that the GRUB can boot (writing a
> 32-bit protected mode version of "Hello, World" with a small multiboot
> kernel and such, never really got that much further then that, though I
> wanted to).
> 
> > Just grab a copy of SysRecueCd (http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page),
> > boot from it, mount your root partition, and chroot to it. Then you
> > can try to re-install Grub or install a boot manager that is more
> > stable (doesn't suck).
> > 
> 
> With LILO, the most you can do is change the command line that the
> kernel receives, IIRC.  You don't have the flexibility of changing
> things like what initrd is loaded if you're testing new things or
> anything similar to that.  I would try to find out the root cause,
> rather then bailing out so quickly.  If there is a problem with the GRUB
> booting up, I'd be inclined to say that it means that stage 1.5 isn't
> loading.  (I'm not sure, but I think the Stage 1.5 is loaded from a
> block list since the initial boot sector only has 512 bytes to play
> with, and it's rather hard to write something that can read and
> interpret a filesystem in that small of a space when you have other
> considerations to make during system boot).
> 
> 	- Mike
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> 
> iD8DBQFEPmPv0kE/IBnFmjARA63hAKCLbNKT8oa/AxYVAt35nzHUawDETQCffl/h
> 9eYq22rzy7MAGdlvl9TWZLg=
> =aJc8
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>