12.04.1, alternate CD hangs on grub-install - RAID

[ladasky]

Hi, folks,

I managed to bork my 11.10 installation, probably with an unnecessary NVidia GPU driver upgrade. But I've been meaning to upgrade to 12.04 for a while, and so I'm trying to do that. I'm tired of managing my GPU driver issues manually, and I'm hoping that 12.04.1 will solve that problem for me.

Here's my configuration information:

• Gigabyte GA-MA78-US2H motherboard, 8 GB RAM, AMD Phenom II x6 1100T CPU
• NVidia 460 family GPU card
• Ubuntu 11.10 OS, 64-bit; no other operating systems to complicate matters
• Two hard drives operated in RAID1 configuration, administered by mdadm; four partitions; swap, root for 11.10, home, and one spare partition that I reserved for the root for 12.04

I downloaded both the standard and the alternate installations of 12.04.1, x86, 64-bit. Both passed their checksum tests, and I burned two CD's. My system boots from the 12.04.1 live CD (with the nomodeset option). I am using it right now.

Because I'm using RAID, I have been using the alternate CD's to install Ubuntu. I've been doing this with success since 10.10. But when I try this with 12.04.1, I only get up to grub-install, and then the system hangs. I've waited 15 minutes to an HOUR before giving up. The hard drives were thrashing the whole time. I had this exact same problem when I tried plain-old 12.04 (rather than 12.04.1) several months ago.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to why grub-install is failing, and how I might fix it?

Alternately: in a recent thread another poster hinted that you can install to a RAID from the standard, live CD, if you know what you are doing. He didn't give directions, though. How do I proceed? I figure that the first step would be to build my RAID. I can do that. From the Live CD, I am able to:

• sudo apt-get install mdadm
• build all of my RAID1 partitions with a series of sudo mdadm --create commands (EDIT: sudo mdadm --assemble --scan works better!)
• mount both the 11.10 root partition and the home partition.

Can I just run the graphical installation process from there? The empty partition that I reserved for 12.04 won't mount, obviously, because it isn't formatted yet.

[oldfred]

Added RAID to your title as only a few know RAID. I do not.

Run the BootInfo report. You probably need to install the mdadm first.

Post the link to the BootInfo report that this creates. Is part of Boot-Repair:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Info
Boot Repair -Also handles LVM, GPT, separate /boot and UEFI dual boot.:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
You can repair many boot issues with this or 'Create BootInfo' report (Other Options) & post the link it creates, so we can see your exact configuration and diagnose advanced problems.
Install in Ubuntu liveCD or USB or Full RepairCD with Boot-Repair (for newer computers)
http://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair/home/Home/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuSecureRemix

Boot Repair runs the Bootinfoscript as part of BootInfo report it creates.
Boot script is able to search LVM partitions if the LVM2 package is install, Fedora needs to be mounted to see it with os-prober
# ("apt-get install lvm2" in debian based distros)
# Is able to search Linux Software Raid partitions (MD Raids) if
# the "mdadm" package is installed.
sudo apt-get install lvm2
sudo apt-get install mdadm
sudo apt-get install gawk
sudo apt-get install xz-utils
# unlzma is equivalent to xz --format=lzma --decompress.

[darkod]

Yeah, after adding mdadm in live session and creating the md devices, you should be able to simply start the install with the desktop icon.

It would be better to use manual partitioning, the Something Else option. When the partitions list shows, the md devices should be there. Do not try to mount them before you begin the install process, you need to install on unmounted devices.

Select /dev/sda for the bootloader installation if that's one of the disks part of the array. You can add grub2 to /dev/sdb once the system is running.

I don't remember whether I have tried this with the live cd, but in theory it should work.

It's very strange that the alternate cd is giving you trouble. You might be affected by some bug, strange hardware combination, etc.

PS. Forgot to mention. I would actually create the partitions too with parted before starting the GUI install. Right after you create the md devices you plan to use, use parted and create single partition from each md device. I think this step was necessary. Later in the manual partitioning step you only select the partitions to use, and select their mount points. You don't actually create them in that step.
Try both options, I'm not 100% sure which one will work, maybe both.

[ladasky]

I'm not done yet, but I'm popping in with a status update.

Before I had read any of your answers, I attempted a live CD installation onto my RAID, and it failed. HOWEVER I think that part of the problem was that the Live CD commandeered one of my physical swap partitions. The system wouldn't let me redefine the new RAID1 swap while one of its components was in use. Also, selections with the partition editor inside the graphical installation utility were clunky, and doing odd things.

I have done some research and discovered the command sudo swapoff -a, which unmounts all swap partitions. I have 8 GB of RAM, I should be OK without swap, at least during any installation process.

oldfred: I followed your links to the boot-repair package. I got some errors following the installation directions, but that may be due to the fact that the instructions date back to Ubuntu 11.04? Anyway, boot-repair runs. On startup, I got a message which read: "DMRaid packages my interfere with mdraid. Uninstall them?" I selected "yes", as I'm using mdadm and not dmraid.

My boot report is here. I don't know how to read most of it. But one thing that jumps out at me (see lines 67-73) is that I seem to have no 11.10 partition at all on my RAID any more. It should appear on /dev/md/1. Instead, I have 12.04.1 there? No, I'm pretty sure that I don't. Funny -- I was TRYING to install it on /dev/md/2.

In any case, my 11.10 system already was NOT working before I starting fussing with this 12.04.1 installation. Something different is causing grub-install to hang when I try the 12.04 alternate install CD's.

I see error messages on indicating that I have partitions "outside the disk" (lines 476, 530, and 656). I have no idea how that might have happened, but the report suggests that boot-repair knows how to fix those problems, and I am going to let it try to do so.

[oldfred]

I do not know RAID, so those issues Darko or someone that knows RAID will have to help with.

Normally this says e2fsck is needed, not sure if the same with RAID or not.

md/2: _______________________

    File system:       
    Boot sector type:  -
    Boot sector info: 
    Mounting failed:   mount: unknown filesystem type ''

The partitions outside disk for sr0 are not an issue. I think it just has to do with the oversize CDs.
But line 656 looks like md3. And it does not show details to confirm. Devices sda, sdb Partition table itself looks ok.

But you also then seem to have errors in RAID partition table. Which may relate to drives being slightly different in size - see total sectors and then last partition is different:

/dev/sda4          93,747,200 1,250,263,039 1,156,515,840  fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb4          93,747,200 1,250,260,991 1,156,513,792  fd Linux raid autodetect

I thought with RAID they had to be the same, or sda4 needs to be a bit smaller to accommodate the slightly smaller sdb4 because sdb is a few sectors smaller than sda. Or if RAID is using the entire partition it does not match??

[darkod]

1. I don't think the difference in sector size between sda4 and sdb4 is a problem. As we can see, /dev/md3 sector size is smaller than both numbers anyway, so it looks like the md3 device is correctly assembled despite the sda4 and sdb4 difference. Yes, the partitions should be identical size but it looks like md3 is assembled anyway with slightly smaller size.

2. /dev/md2 fdisk results are little different compared to the other md devices. It actually shows a partition on it, like /dev/md2p1. The other md devices don't show this p1 partition and it seems to be the correct way (I just checked my server md devices and they don't have p1 in fdisk).
I am not sure if this is an issue, or simply the md2 was created with another partition on top of it. I am also not sure if that explains why md2 doesn't show in any blkid results.

3. The partition out of disk about sr0 is no issue, like oldfred says. That's a common message about CDs.

If we put md2 aside, which shouldn't affect your new 12.04 installation on md1 anyway, I actually don't see anything bad in the bootinfo. It all looks normal.

If it still fails to install grub2, you can try adding it from live session.