On 2014/06/23 11:34, Andras Horvath wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Jun 2014 07:52:32 -0700
> "Patrick J. LoPresti" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2014 at 1:25 AM, Andras Horvath <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm having problem with the latest kernel version for some time now. The previous kernel version boots fine and everything works just well, but the latest kernel (v2.6.32-431.17.1.el6.x86_64) cannot boot and Grub says something like "trying to reach blocks outside of partition" and that's all the message there is and boot hangs.
>>
>> This sounds to me like your kernel has some blocks that lie beyond
>> what GRUB can read during boot (using the system BIOS). It worked
>> before because you got lucky; any time you reinstalled a kernel, you
>> were running the risk of some of the new boot image's blocks lying
>> outside the bootable range.
>>
>> If this is correct, checking the inode number will not help. because
>> the problem the blocks inside the file itself, not the inode.
>>
>> Possible fixes, in increasing order of difficulty:
>>
>> Copy the kernel and initrd images until you get lucky again
>> See if your system BIOS has a setting related to booting from large disks
>> Reinstall grub with the "--force-lba" option
>> Reinstall the system, using an EFI boot partition (have fun)
>> Reinstall the system, creating a small (<500M) /boot partition as the
>> first partition on the drive
>>
>>
>> That last is what I have done for years. I tried not doing so for my
>> last install on a large RAID -- figuring this is the 21st century --
>> and my system failed to boot. I reinstalled with a small /boot
>> partition and now it consistently works fine across dozens of
>> reinstalls. I do not know whether this is due to a buggy RAID BIOS or
>> something else, and I do not care...
>>
>> Good luck.
>>
>>   - Pat
>
>
> An update on my issue. The latest kernel update (2.6.32-431.20.3.el6.x86_64) seems to have fixed my problem. The system boots fine without any grub or other error message.
>
> I hope it stays like this. Cheers and thanks for the help!
>
>
> Andras

I recently installed a dual boot SL6 on top of the XP32 I had on the machine.
It's out in the last 64 megabytes on a two terabyte drive. It boots very well
going through ntldr to grubldr to Linux. That hints that even grub should be
quite happy at least in the first two terabytes of any disk or array of disks.
(This machine is a fakeraid to boot - something I am in the process of
changing if the 3Ware card I bought on E-Bay is going to work for me. Um, the
machine has PCI-X slots and is otherwise overpowered. So there's no sense
throwing it away when I can recycle it to run virtual machines for testing.)

{^_^}   Joanne