Recovering/Restoring Boot Partition

[Don Levey]

On 2/21/2014 11:38, Chris Murphy wrote:
> 
> On Feb 21, 2014, at 5:29 AM, Don Levey <fedora-list at the-leveys.us>
> wrote:
>>> No. Hardware raid will show up as a single /dev/sdX device. What 
>>> results do you get for lsblk?
> 
> It's a nitpick, but for what it's worth it's always best to include
> the command used. I understand the motivation to keep things tidy,
> and concise, but in this case we're talking about one additional
> line.
>>> 
>>> 
>> NAME                   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT sda
>> 8:0    0   149G  0 disk &#9492;&#9472;sda3     		  8:3    0  99.8G
>> 0 part &#9500;&#9472;vg_dauphin-lv_root 253:0    0  94.9G  0 lvm
>> / &#9492;&#9472;vg_dauphin-lv_swap 253:1    0     5G  0 lvm
>> [SWAP] sdb                    		  8:16   1   7.6G  0 disk 
>> &#9492;&#9472;sdb1    		  8:17   1   7.6G  0 part sdc
>> 8:32   0   149G  0 disk &#9500;&#9472;sdc1     		  8:33   0    49G
>> 0 part &#9500;&#9472;sdc2     		  8:34   0   200M  0 part 
>> &#9492;&#9472;sdc3      	  8:35   0  99.8G  0 part
> [snipped all loop and live devices]
> 
> Are you certain this is hardware raid and not
> firmware/BIOS/motherboard raid?  What is the make/model of hardware
> raid card? Did you choose one disk or two disks, in the Fedora
> installer?
> 
It is likely motherboard RAID; in my ignorance I thought they were the
same thing.  When installing, I chose 1 disk, if I recall correctly (it
was a while ago).

> It looks to me like sda and sdc have the same partitions and sizes,
> and suggests they should be in a raid1 configuration. I think sdb is
> probably USB flash media of the Fedora installer.
> 
> What it looks like to me is that this is actually IMSM RAID, which is
> a firmware initiated RAID but then is software raid after that. And
> for whatever reason it's not being properly initiated. The fact the
> first partition starts at LBA 63 suggests Windows XP at least
> originally.
> 
It has been dual boot, with XP and Fedora.  The XP partition seems to
still work without issue.

> What do you get for:
> 
> mdadm -E /dev/sda mdadm -E /dev/sdc
> 
> 
(this time, with commands, because I can learn. :-) )

[root at localhost don]# mdadm -E /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
   MBR Magic : aa55
Partition[0] :    102760449 sectors at           63 (type 07)
Partition[1] :       409600 sectors at    102760512 (type 83)
Partition[2] :    209326268 sectors at    103170112 (type 8e)
[root at localhost don]# mdadm -E /dev/sdc
/dev/sdc:
   MBR Magic : aa55
Partition[0] :    102760449 sectors at           63 (type 07)
Partition[1] :       409600 sectors at    102760512 (type 83)
Partition[2] :    209326268 sectors at    103170112 (type 8e)

So yes, they seem to be relating the same thing.
 -Don