LinuxOnTheEdge

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2650 with on-board Adaptec Perc3Di SCSI RAID
controller (mirrored 18GB drives for OS). It also has an add-in
Adaptec 2810SA 8-channel SATA RAID card. After installing FC3, and
installing GRUB to the MBR of the mirrored 18GB drives for OS, when I
boot the system, I get "GRUB Loading Stage2Read Error".

The Dell system and both RAID controllers were updated to their latest
BIOS versions prior to installing the OS.

I even tried (to no avail) booting into rescue mode, chrooting, and running:
"grub-install /dev/sda".

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Skie

If it's a loading stage 2 error, then GRUB is unable to find the Kernel. What file system did you use? (ext3, reiserfs, etc) Also, can you get ahold of your grub.conf file and paste it here? It should be located in /boot/grub. It may also be called menu.lst (that's an L not a one).

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LinuxOnTheEdge

When I remove the add-in card from the system, grub works perfectly off of the on-board Adaptec Perc3Di SCSI RAID controller (mirrored 18GB drives for OS).

I don't think the latest Dell BIOS for this machine has the provision to boot from add-in cards first, or to prioritize add-in cards after the on-board devices.

I do know that the SATA add-in controller definately comes up first after POST before the on-board SCSI controller's BIOS.

Skie

If the order of the drives changes with the addon card, then this could be why Grub is unable to find the kernel as it would be looking at the wrong drive. Also, if you're using software RAID, there are special considerations that need to be looked into in order to boot properly.

Personally, I would stick with SCSI over SATA, although they are much more expensive.

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LinuxOnTheEdge

Well, as suggested by various people, I booted the system into rescue mode using the install cd. Once booted, I chroot'ed, then ran:

grub
grub> root(hd0,0)
grub> setup(hd0)

This command did not return any errors. All output looked successful and normal from my experience on single-disk systems.

/boot/grub/devices.map, fdisk -l, and grub tab expansion output all confirm that /dev/sda is indeed (hd0), and root is definately (hd0,0).

By the way, I also verified that /dev/sda1 is bootable, and that /dev/sdb1 is not bootable.

Now, when I boot the system, instead of getting a grub stage 2 error, I get a grub stage 1.5 error. Does this help anyone further diagnose the problem?

Skie

There are 3 stages to the boot process. During the first stage, the BIOS runs the boot code located on the MBR. This code locates and executes the 1.5 stage code which technically is the second stage. This 1.5 stage loads the files needed for GRUB to be able to read the file system so that it can properly locate and load the stage 2 code which then loads the kernel. The stage 2 is technically the 3rd stage.

At this point, GRUB is unable to locate the stage 1.5 files. When using "root(hd0,0)", is your /boot directory/partition the first partition on the drive? If not, then this is where you went wrong. Boot up through the rescue mode once again and look at your /etc/fstab. If it lists a /boot, see what the /dev/sdx is. If it's /dev/sd2, then you'll need to use "root(hd0,1)". Or, if you don't have a /boot, then it's most likely under the root partition which is just /. Again, look to see what partition number it is.

I've never setup RAID before, so I don't know if there are any specifics that need to be accounted for, but I do know that there tend to be a few differences between RAID and non RAID setups.

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LinuxOnTheEdge

/boot is defaintely /dev/sda1, so I am pretty sure that's not the problem.

Skie

Can you give me a run down of all the drives you have and how they're seen by the system? i.e. CD/DVD drives should be at /dev/hdx, then your scsi and sata drives.

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LinuxOnTheEdge

On-Board Raid:
/dev/sda (18GB Mirror)
/dev/sda1 = /boot
/dev/sda2 = /

External SATA Raid:
/dev/sdb (1.4TB Raid5)
(unassigned)

CD-Rom
/dev/hda