[Gllug] CentOS boot problem

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 12 October 2010 15:43, Alain Williams <addw at phcomp.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 03:33:50PM +0100, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
>
>> I visited the server and gave it a bit of TLC.
>> The server was failing to even load grub second stage.
>> It got as far as printing "GRUB" and then halting, no other messages.
>> It did not even get to the grub command prompt.
>> All I needed to do the fix it was to "grub-install --no-floppy
>> /dev/sda"  using the "linux rescue" boot from the install CDs and
>> chrooted to the HD filesystem.
>>
>> I have absolutely no idea what corrupted the boot sectors.
>
> Would it be dual boot with MS Windows and have Adobe s/ware on it ?
> I heard something recently about Adobe keeping license type info in ''spare''
> disk blocks immediately after the boot sector.
>

Do you have a URL describing the specifics of this.
If Adobe are doing that, it is likely to kill the boot of over 10000
desktop windows PCs we have in our company!!!
We use a windows product that does "Whole disk encryption" and it
installs itself in the entire first track of the HD. I.e. Not just the
boot sector, but a number of sectors at the beginning of the disk,
just like grub does.
In this particular case, windows has not been booted on this machine
of over 3 months, it is a Linux server, although it can dual boot to
windows if needed. This server is in our test environment, which it
why it still has the possibility to dual boot.
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