help with /boot inside lvm2 and grub2

[Kingtu]

I had a drive going bad so I wanted to remove the drive from the lvm but this drive also was where /boot resided. So I followed this tutorial I found on fedora forum http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=264174 but tried to have the /boot added on an already existing lv instead of a new lv called lv_boot in the tutorial. So now I can't boot. Tried using a live cd and created the lv_boot but am unable to get grub2 to work. When I enter the command grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg errors out because I'm in a live cd environment with the vol groups mounted. I have even tried supergrub2 disk but that doesn't work. Any ideas??? I can't lose all the data on my lvm.

[bkahuna]

/boot cannot be inside of your LVM. Like a 50MB /boot ext2 or ext3 partition is what you need. (Mine is 100MB for roundness)

if you are trying to use grub2-mkconfig from (I'm assuming a chroot environment) a livecd make sure your /sys and /proc are mounted before chrooting.

So.........

mount --bind /proc /mnt/whatever/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/whatever/sys
...
chroot /mnt/whatever bash -l

if you haven't been using this method, the '...' is for mounting any other partitions; ie. /boot, /home, /dev (mandatory), cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/whatever/etc/ (also mandatory), etc.

[Kingtu]

Thanks for the info but the whole reason I was trying to use grub is because it allows the boot partition to be part of the LVM as stated in the tutorial I linked. When I installed fedora it created the lvm but with a separate boot partition like you recommend. My problem is my drive with the boot partition was failing and I was trying to avoid purchasing a new harddrive. Is it possible to do without purchasing a new hard drive and just continue to use the 2 drives in my LVM? If I reduce the size of my lvm can I create a separate boot partition? I guess I can do that with gparted but the how do I install grub to that partition with all the correct paths to the kernels and LVM? Please give detailed instructions because I am at a loss. I have tried for hours. I would hate to have to copy my data off the lvm and reinstall

[bkahuna]

if the old system is still workable, you can try changing the volume group size with gparted in some rescueCD style environment, then boot the normal system, create the new /dev/sdX#, mount it to a folder and copy all of /boot into it. then change your fstab to point to the new /dev/sdX# as your /boot partition, run the rescueCD again, fix GRUB to be installed on the MBR of the new disc, reboot.

that should do it

[Kingtu]

I'm going to try to reinstall to the bad drive create separate LVM, keeping the old LVM intact and I'll have a good boot partition to transfer to the LVM with grub2

[Kingtu]

OK made some progress. I have a grub menu and it starts to boot but fails and drops me into a drak shell?? Anyone know where to go from here. I know about the bash shell but nothing about drak shell