Re: grub fails to boot, prints only a single dot

[Alex Regan]

Hi,

> > I have a fedora20 system on a 1U rackmount Supermicro chassis with two disks
> > in a mdadm RAID1 configuration that's been running for quite some time. I
> > recently added two additional disks, in a separate RAID1, and mounted it on
> > /var.
> >
> > After adding the two new disks, the system failed to boot. No grub boot menu
> > or anything. Just a single dot then a newline, where the system would sit
> > there until I eventually had to hard reset it to boot.
> >
> > Removing the two new disks and the system boots again normally (except for
> > the new /var mountpoint, of course).
> >
> > Running grub2-install again for all four disks doesn't help. I've even
> > uninstalled and reinstalled the kernel, and tried to manually regenerate the
> > initramfs with no change.
> >
> > Does anyone understand grub enough to help troubleshoot this? I suspect it's
> > something to do with the second-stage loader?
>
> Are you sure system does not try to boot from new disks?

I'm pretty sure I've cycled through all four disks in the BIOS boot 
order, although it's possible. It's somewhat difficult because all four 
disks are identical and the BIOS doesn't provide a way to distinguish 
one from the other.

I've also even tried to rearrange the disks physically by rearranging 
the disk trays in the chassis...

I've also installed grub on all four disks. Wouldn't this serve to 
direct the boot information to the disks with /boot and the real root?

Thanks,
Alex