topic Why boot record broken after firmware upgrade? in Operating System - Linux

Why boot record broken after firmware upgrade?

Vitaly Karasik_1 — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:14:15 GMT

I had weird problem after firmware upgrade on one of my servers (Tyan-based motherboard with SATA controller).
The problem that after I upgraded BIOS my Linux stopped boot. Only booting from rescue CD and reinstalling grub boot record fixed this problem.
I'm still curious why this happened... Any ideas?

Re: Why boot record broken after firmware upgrade?

Matti_Kurkela — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:51:53 GMT

If the system was originally set to boot from a non-default disk, this setting may have been reset to default in the firmware upgrade.

Reinstalling the boot record would then make the new disk bootable, probably by mapping back to the old boot disk.

If you have an old backup copy of your GRUB configuration file and/or /boot/grub/device.map file, compare them to the current versions. Any differences might be enlightening.

MK

Re: Why boot record broken after firmware upgrade?

Vitaly Karasik_1 — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:25:39 GMT

>If the system was originally set to boot >from a non-default disk, this setting may >have been reset to default in the firmware >upgrade.
It's not the case - I double-checked boot order - in all cases it was my 1st SATA disk.

>If you have an old backup copy of your GRUB >configuration file >and/or /boot/grub/device.map file, compare >them to the current versions. Any >differences might be enlightening.
Grub config was't changed. All what I did it's "grub>root (hd0,0)", "grub> setup (hd0)" - i.e., with the same device as it was into grub.conf.

Re: Why boot record broken after firmware upgrade?

Steven E. Protter — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:28:37 GMT

Shalam Vitaly,

Vitaly, I've seen this happen once in a while. Happened after updating the firmware on an HP branded server to a system that was connected to a SAN. It tried after the upgrade to boot off the SAN until I reinstalled grub.

The cause of this was determined to be a bug in the firmware release. I suspect this is the case with you as well.

SEP

Re: Why boot record broken after firmware upgrade?

Vitaly Karasik_1 — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:37:09 GMT

Shalom & thank you!
In you case it seems like BIOS upgrade changed storage devices order. In my case I have just 4 local disks and I tried to eject all of them except the first system drive - this didn't help. So I don't sure that your explanation is relevant for my server...

Re: Why boot record broken after firmware upgrade?

Huc_1 — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:12:04 GMT

Bonjour ,

Read the "grub info" specially the node device map 15.3 (15.3 The map between BIOS drives and OS devices), This I think explain it better then I could ...

I think this is your problem if I understand this correctly.

enjoy life

Jean-Pierre Huc

Re: Why boot record broken after firmware upgrade?

Vitaly Karasik_1 — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 10:18:02 GMT

But in this case grub config should be modified, and this isn't my case.