64-Bit Ubuntu under RAID corrupting MBR and Dual-Boot

alexhore

alexhore

Member
Hi all, I am thinking this is going to be an easy fix but no matter how much I search I cannot find the answer so here goes.

Trying to used easy bcd with the vista bootloader as grub bootloader wont work with my vista on raid0.

I have vista 64bit installed on my raid0 hard drive setup two drives showing as c under windows raid is on the mobo.

I installed easy bcd current version.

I installed osx on the second drive

Then I made three more partitions the end one is storage

I installed Ubuntu in the middle two partitions one for files system and other for swap.

I selected in the advanced menu when installing to install grub on hard drive 2 partition 2 (it recognised the the main file system partition).

So just to summarise

hdd1 (raid0) windows vista64bit
hdd2 osx ubuntu swap storage

I repaired the vista mbr and can boot in and out of vista fine.

I made entry's using bcd for osx and ubuntu.
("add an entry" selected linux named it and selected partition from list)

I can now boot in and out of vista and osx fine.

After my first boot of ubuntu I had to fix the mbr again? no operating system

After lots of messing around I have discovered I only smash the mbr when I use the restart option in ubuntu.

So to summarise again I can boot in and out of all operating systems fine using shut down but restart in ubuntu seems to be writing to the mbr.

I am guessing this will make sense to someone as the system has to write to mbr to tell the system to come back on but I don't really have a clue.

Any help will most defiantly be appreciated and I will follow up for others.
I have dropped this on both the ubuntu forums and neosmart forums.
Many thanks

Addendum:

On the off chance someone is following this I have just realised there is a beta 2.0 easy bcd which I should be using.
As I am using the latest ubuntu I should not have even been able to boot as fix's are in 2.0.
Ill try tonight and update.

Addendum:

On the off chance someone is following this I have just realised there is a beta 2.0 easy bcd which I should be using.
As I am using the latest ubuntu I should not have even been able to boot as fix's are in 2.0.
Ill try tonight and update.
 
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Well that dint work. All I can asume is that becouse the MBR is on a raid setup linux screws it up when restarting as linux see's the drives as two seperate drives.
Thats on another asumption that linux writes to the MBR on restart.
:frowning: O well, I will have to just use the shut down option and turn it back on with the power button for now grrrrrrr
 
Hi there, Os's do write to the MBR when re-starting and becouse linux dose not recognise my raid0 it thinks I have two drives and writes on one of them only, the first.
Options are...
1 Find some software that lets linux recognise raid0.
2 Move the MBR/bootloader over to the storage drive (none raid) and set that as the boot disk.
3 Leave it as it is.

Hummmmm, anyone know if 1 or 2 are possable?

Can
 
Hi Alex, welcome to NST.
Sorry you've not been getting any response, but I don't think we have a lot of experienced RAID users here, and my personal policy is not to offer advice on a subject I know nothing about.
Guru uses one flavour of RAID but I'm not sure if it's the same as yours, and I do know that a couple of us spent quite some time a month or so ago, attempting to help someone with problems getting Linux to multi-boot.
It resisted all of our combined efforts, and was finally diagnosed as being RAID-related as far as I remember.
Unfortunately that's not very helpful for you, but maybe CG will be able to help when he's next around. He's obviously a bit busy with other things at the moment, so I can't offer any hint of when he might next appear.
 
Thanks Terry, its just nice to know whay there is a problem even If I cant fix it but If I do then I guess there will be some interest.

Thanks again
 
Hey Alex,

I use mdadm to manage RAID under Ubuntu. At home I had it set up for RAID 0 at one point, and at work I used it to recover a RAID 5 configuration.

However, mdadm is for the setup and configuration of software RAID configurations.

I'm assuming you have a software RAID configuration, because if it were hardware RAID Ubuntu wouldn't be able to see one of the drives individually - either all or nothing.

Addendum:

Thread title updated
 
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