I was smiling as my new Dell 1950 server installed. A replacement web server, its configuration is more complex than most things. It installed beautifully via the automated installation process. How system administration should work. Then came its first boot. It printed " Bad PBR signature” and stopped.

Looks like this appears to be something with the MBR on the drives that I’m attempting to setup in a RAID 1. So, let’s re-install Grub per the suggestions I got off of IRC. I did. I keep a Grub boot CD handy. No matter how I installed grub the machine wouldn’t boot. I never saw the above message again, but instead received clutter, random bits of what must have been the Dell utility partition, or “Grub loading stage 1.5” over and over and over.

Alas…nothing can ever be easy and simple. I could have gotten something done.

Hmmm…you know, I’ve had complaints from folks installing RHEL 4.4 on a RAID 1 system and having Grub problems. I chalked it up to BIOS issues or not understanding what’s going on. But, perhaps there is more to Bug 217176.