Package: installation-reports Severity: normal
-- Package-specific info: Boot method: CD Image version: Debian Lenny 5.0 (both AMD64 or i386) Date: 2008-02-25 Machine: Intel D945GCLF2 (Atom330) Partitions: sda : sda1 78GB type 0xFD (linux raid autodetect) sda2 1GB type 0x83 (swap) sdb : sdb1 78GB type 0xFD (linux raid autodetect) sdb2 1GB type 0x83 (swap) Comments/Problems: When the root filesystem is installed on a RAID1 MD device (without a /boot partition), by default the installer does not mark the components devices (let's says sda1 and sdb1) as bootable in the partition table. Grub is then successfully installed in the MBR of sda but some really really stupid BIOS (tested on at least 2 different Intel motherboards) refuse to consider the disk as bootable unles at least 1 partition is marked to be bootable. In fact, no matter which partition is set bootable, the bios just don't try to run the MBR loader if there is no partition marked to be bootable. For the moment, one solution is to boot the installation CD in rescue mode just after install, run cfdisk in a shell and set the Boot flag on the first partition of the first drive (let's say sda1). This solves the problem. reinstalling grub in the MBR is not mandatory. It would be VERY useful to add a small warning at Grub installation time "Warning : The disk where your are atempting to install grub has no bootable partitions. In this particular situation, some (uncommon) systems will refuse to run the bootloader even if it's correctly installed. To avoid this problem, you need to toogle the boot flag of one partition on the concerned drive. Would you like to run the partition editor now ? (default choice=No) ------ About hardware report and install report. Sorry but I didn't wrote this bug report on the buggy machine, so the hardware summary was false. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-boot-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org