Grub on HighPoint ATA RAID. Help please!

[ukmattlaw]

I have a Highpoint RocketRAID ATA133 RAID using two disks setup as RAID0. I followed the install docs and specified doataraid as it said and everything seemed to go OK up to installing a boot loader.

I have the following partition structure on the RAID array:

1 NTFS Win 2000
5 Extended
6 ext2 /boot
7 swap
8 ReiserFS /

How do I get a boot loader installed?

The docs seemed to say that I may have to use LILO... I emerged grub and it can see the NTFS partition as hd0,0 but nothing else!

I took the precautionary measure of creating a boot disk which allows me to boot into windows but nothing else

Thanks in advance,

Matt.
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[active]

I knew that using lilo you could boot raid1 partitions (for example /boot on raid1 and the rest on raid0). I've still never found info's about booting raid with grub.I solved the problem by putting a third HD mounted as /boot|ID:0 and with grub installed there.
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[cyrillic]

GRUB works just fine for booting from a Highpoint RAID array, but there are a few gotchas and I would like to save you the pain of discovering these on your own.

1. If you compiled your kernel from gentoo-sources, you will need to redo your kernel. gentoo-sources does not have support for the HPT372 / HPT374 chip on your RAID card. ac-sources will work (my personal favorite) and I've heard that gs-sources will also work.

2. Delete all of GRUB's stage1_5 files from /boot/grub. This is very important because letting GRUB install one of these files will overwrite Highpoint's array info on the harddrive and you will lose all the data on your array (I found this out the hard way). Just so you know, the stage1_5 files are optional, and GRUB works just fine without them.

3. Use a GRUB floppy to install GRUB to the harddrive, this is the easiest way. You can also boot your kernel manually from the GRUB floppy without actually installing a bootloader. If you want to install GRUB from your already running system, you will need to create / edit a device map so that GRUB can be installed correctly. See this thread :
GRUB and ataraid problem

[ukmattlaw]

thanks!

I'm not at my machine now, but I'll try these tonight and post back if I can't get it to work. I'm assuming I just need to boot off of the install CD and chroot into my half-finished installation where I need to 'swap on' and 'emerge -k ac-sources' ?

I'll install the bootloader to a floppy until I know it works before trying to get it onto the MBR of the raid array. I need to have at least one working OS to be able to sort this out

Many Thanks,

Matt.

PS: Any chance that the install guide can be updated to reflect these issues? Browsing the forums shows that I'm not the only one having problems with ATA RAID and boot loaders...
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[Pete_Keller]

ukmattlaw,

You will also have to mount your root and /boot partitions (as well as any others you have made). Lesson learned the hard way.

Pete
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[ukmattlaw]

Thanks guys

After mucho messing around I've finally got the system to run with an ac-sources kernel as had been suggested.

Another issue I ran into is that when I booted from the install CD and chrooted into my half-finshed installation I couldn't install grub into any partition at that point (error 22). I made a boot floppy and re-booted and I seem to have a usable grub boot menu retaining my windo$ options.

Again, many thanks to all who helped. We couldn't do this without you.

One final thing...go get the latest FlightGear 0.93-preX CVS. It rocks!

Take Care,

Matt.
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