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Hello Serverfault community.

I hope someone can shed light on a peculiar problem I am having with an Ubuntu 9.10 server install. I am not a Linux expert but have the responsibility of fixing the box if something goes wrong. DOH!

I have Ubuntu 9.10 server installed on on a desktop platform: Compaq Presario SR5027CL.

There are two 1TB SATA drives configured in a RAID 1 array; I use the box as an email backup server for a small group of users.

Last week one of the drives failed and was replaced with a new drive of the same type.

The problem I have been having is getting the box to reboot after a restart or a shutdown halt.

The OS and the RAID 1 array are on the same drives that make up the RAID 1 array. The replacement drive (sda) was added to the box and the partitions were created to match the existing good drive (sdb).

The array is made up of sda1 and sdb1.

I found an interesting point while checking the BIOS settings: there is a "HDD Boot Group Priority" section, and the new drive was selected as the "1. 3rd master"; the server wouldn't boot configured like that, but when I set the old drive to be "1. 4th master", the box will reboot.

I'm checking some more things, but I would certainly appreciate any useful information.

Thanks in advance.

user149041
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2 Answers2

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The most likely cause is that grub is installed on one drive, but not on the other.

You should explicitly install it on both.

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the replacement drive was installed pretty smoothly, but there were some issues with getting the system to reboot after a shutdown. The steps taken to add the replacement drive did bot seem to be the culprit. I checked the BIOS settings and found that the new drive was selected as the first boot drive. When this setting was changed to the old drive, the system would boot/reboot normally.

GRUB had not been installed on the MBR of the new drive, so I had to reinstall GRUB from the Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD and point it to /dev/sda.

booted off of the live CD. chose rescue a broken system from the options menu blew through the options, i.e., language, keyboard. named the server techsrvr. chose /dev/md0 as the root file system. chose Reinstall GRUB Boot loader from the options. entered /dev/sda and continue.

user149041
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