Well, my Dell 1950 isn’t printing out “Bad PBR signature.” anymore. I figured out how to fix the below error and how to recreate it, fix it again. There seems to be some issue with Grub involving the device mappings. While the device mappings that Anaconda wrote to disk look fine, something isn’t right.

I've been using my Grub CD to boot the machine and attempt to correct the Grub installation issues. Also the Grub CD is handy to boot the system by using the 'configfile' option. Once booted into the system proper I started up a Grub shell and ran the following:

device (hd0) /dev/sdaroot (hd0,0)setup (hd0)device (hd0) /dev/sdbroot (hd0,0setup (hd0)

The last 3 lines are for my RAID 1 configuration for /boot. I rebooted and the box booted up like a champ. When I boot of my Grub CD and reinstall Grub to the MBR I get the old non-bootable behavior. Its strange. I wonder what’s going on…

Some references:

• Post to anaconda-devel
• Article on why you should raid not only your data disks but your system disk too