On Jun 17, 2014, at 16:52 , Patrick J. LoPresti 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.

Sounds reasonable, but it shouldn't happen in this case (see below).

> If this is correct, checking the inode number will not help. because
> the problem the blocks inside the file itself, not the inode.

Right, if the issue is with the addressable blocks.

> Possible fixes, in increasing order of difficulty:
> 
> Copy the kernel and initrd images until you get lucky again

Yes, likely to work after you delete some files larger than those written
in the early days.

> See if your system BIOS has a setting related to booting from large disks

It's a server, and not cheap cr**. And the disk isn't actually "large", since it's < 2 TiB.

> Reinstall grub with the "--force-lba" option

I'd be surprised if GRUB wouldn't be able to detect availability of LBA on this system. I wonder whether there's a way to find out on the GRUB command line.

> Reinstall the system, using an EFI boot partition (have fun)

SL6 boots quite fine from disks with GPT partition tables, even in legacy BIOS mode. But again, the logical drive is < 2 TiB, so this shouldn't be necessary.

> Reinstall the system, creating a small (<500M) /boot partition as the
> first partition on the drive

That's the best choice, and I think it's the one still recommended by TUV.

Current Fedora recommends at least 500MB for /boot.

Still curious,
	Stephan

> 
> 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

-- 
Stephan Wiesand
DESY -DV-
Platanenenallee 6
15738 Zeuthen, Germany