[Gllug] CentOS boot problem

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 12 October 2010 12:27, Chris Bell <chrisbell at chrisbell.org.uk> wrote:
> On Tue 12 Oct, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a CentOS 5 machine. It was booting fine a few days ago.
>> I did a "yum update" today and it installed various updates, one
>> included the kernel.
>> When I rebooted it, it fails to boot now, and comes up with a grub
>> prompt, no menu, just a prompt.
>> It will not take any keyboard input.
>> Has anyone seen this before with CentOS.
>> I have never seen it before with debian or ubuntu.
>>
>> I suppose I will have to boot from CD and repair it, but I think it is
>> very bad if "yum update" kills a box so badly like this.
>>
>> Kind Regards
>>
>> James
>
>   I had a problem with Debian updates a while ago because it changed the
> disc labelling, grub to version 2, and kernel version, all in quick
> succession. In my case it was easiest to do a new clean installation.
>

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.
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