'Missing operating system' after Fedora 10 install on Dell M6400

[marie@dk]

I have installed Fedora 10 on a Dell M6400. It has 2 disks in a mirror raid. It came with Windows Vista, but I am not doing a dual boot setup. I have formattet the disk with this installation.

I downloaded http://ftp.crc.dk/fedora/linux/releases/10/Fedora/i386/iso/Fedora-10-i386-DVD.iso, burned the DVD and did the install check. It passed the check.
The installation went fine, but after the first reboot I am getting "Missing operating system".

I have no idea where to begin...

Could the installation media be faulty after all? I there anyway to get passed this, without reinstalling? I know this may have something to do with the boot loader, but I don't know anything about it.

I have installed Fedora 4,5,6,8,9 and this never happened to me before, but then again, I did all these installations on my old Dell Latitude.... Could this have something to do with the new hardware?

Since I don't know what else to do, I have begun a new installation hoping that this was just a freak accident... But maybe I am being naive ;-)

[marie@dk]

Reinstalling did not do the trick.... :-(

Any ideas?

[stoat]

Hello marie@dk,

I don't know why this is happening, but I thought it might help for you to know that "Missing operating system" is one of the error messages in the boot code of an MS master boot record. Whereas that message is not to be found in GRUB stage1, stage1.5, or stage2 (I just checked them all). An MS master boot record always examines the partition table to determine the active partition and loads the boot sector code of that partition into memory to be executed. So to me, a possible explanation is that MS boot code is still in the master boot record that is booting directly from BIOS, and 1) there is no active partition designated, or 2) the active partition has changed to a partition that is incompatible with an MS master boot record.

I suppose (and according to microsoft.com) that message can also be generated even earlier by BIOS if there were problems with the hard drive or the first sector of the hard drive, or the drive is not even being detected. But I just reviewed a long list of typical BIOS error messages and did not see that one. I also doubt that any of those things would suddenly manifest itself just because Fedora was installed.

Conclusion

IMO, this is not being caused by the installation disk being bad or the Fedora installation being corrupted. I feel like it is caused by the boot loader arrangement that you chose during Fedora's installation possibly compounded by your hard drive configuration. I wish I had a clue as to what to do. Maybe someone else will have that.

[marie@dk]

It turns out that this is a known bug in Fedora 10. The raid is seen as 2 disks instead of one.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=471737

Thanks for the answer stoat, you were right, it was a boot loader problem.

[stoat]

Okay.

I don't use RAID and have no interest in it. Nevertheless, since Fedora is completing is installation normally, GRUB stage1 had to go somewhere. I'm betting it's sitting there in the other hard drive's master boot record. And stage1.5 may be right behind it in the DOS Compat Region. It's all just academic now. Just a puzzle. An interesting experiment would be to try booting from that other drive. I doubt that Fedora would boot, but you might at least get a GRUB error message then instead of an MS master boot record message. It would solve nothing, but it might answer the question.

[block device]

Have you tried disabling hardware RAID in BIOS and using software RAID instead? Also, check the compatibility mode of the drives (in BIOS) if they are SATA. Linux can have a bear of a time dealing with SATA in general, let alone throwing hardware RAID in the mix.

I'm with stoat on RAID, though. It's for high availability servers. With a G4U image on a backup server (over ftp) I can reimage a downed system faster than I can figure out what the heck is wrong with a RAID setup.

For home use rsync and an external HD are far more comprehensive and easier to deal with so far as preventing data loss. Between my commercial work and my own systems I haven't lost any data in over 10 years of using Linux. The only data loss at my hands has been windows systems that the hard drive died while in my hands, this after the user reported it was making "funny noises" for a month or more...

BTW I may be one of the few here that not only knows what "stoat" means but actually uses the word regularly. We're overrun with the things here. Anyone want a coat? :D

[stoat]

BTW I may be one of the few here that not only knows what "stoat" means but actually uses the word regularly. We're overrun with the things here. Anyone want a coat?Ha! Yeah, I used to do some fake Internet bank busting work at Artists Against 419, and the little title given to me under my username there was "Trained Attack Stoat". I kinda liked it, and it stuck. I used to have a white one in an avatar here. My apologies to marie@dk for the diversion.

[marie@dk]

In the bug report they say that the only fix for this, is to install F9 and then upgrade to F10 but keeping the F9 kernel.

Since I don't have a lot of time, I'll just stick to F9 for now. The bug is marked as urgent, so I guess it will be fixed soon.

I didn't give the 'stoat' user name much thought, I must admit ;-) ... But since you mentioned it, I looked it up in my English dictionary... Always nice to learn something new...hehe

[marie@dk]

It's been a busy year.... too busy. But the christmas holidays has given me a chance to upgrade. F9 is getting very old. I tried installing ffmpeg, but the F9 packages had been removed from atrpms... That's a first for me, and a hint to get moving :-)

My M6400 is now running Fedora 12 and the installation was very smooth... no problems with my raid. Well, I did expect it to be solved by now since I'm jumping 3 major versions, but it was a bit exiting anyway to see the result...

Happy new year, everyone :-)