raid install fails to boot???

[gearheadgeek]

I needed to install 9.10 on my main box, which runs mirrored raid. With the alternate cd and cli installation, I chose manual partitioning and installed to a free raid partition. I had a bit of trouble booting which I assumed was because sda5, sdb5, and md2 share the same uuid, so I used root=/dev/md2 instead of root=UUID= ..... and it is happy. However, trying to install desktop 9.10 did not show my raid partitions when I chose manual partitioning. So I did the normal - dropped sda8 from md5, installed to that partition, copied sda8 to md5 and hot added sda8 back. Now it is installed but I can't boot it because it can't find the md device. Why? Is the initrd screwed since I installed to non-raid? How do I fix this?

[phillw]

Hi,

RAID and 9.10 have not been the best of friends owing to several undocumented features in the version of Grub2 that shipped with it.

I'd recommend that you put on the server edition of 10.04 with RAID, then simply use tasksel to add the desktop. (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Tasksel)

https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/serverguide/C/advanced-installation.html

But, to answer your question for 9.10, you can head over to https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/serverguide/C/advanced-installation.html for setting up RAID with 9.10

As 10.04 is an LTS, you will find more support from the guys looking after the "server side" than there will be for 9.10.

Regards,

Phill.

[gearheadgeek]

Hi,

RAID and 9.10 have not been the best of friends owing to several undocumented features in the version of Grub2 that shipped with it.
I'm just using grub. This install is to my main work box that has enough free drive space to install something else temporarily when I have contract work to do. The client insists on Ubuntu and I wanted the desktop version to develop with.


I'd recommend that you put on the server edition of 10.04 with RAID, then simply use tasksel to add the desktop. (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Tasksel)
The target is a kiosk and will run either a server edition or cli alternate with minimal X on top of it. 10.04 is more hassle than 9.10, and I may even drop back to 9.04.


But, to answer your question for 9.10, you can head over to https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/serverguide/C/advanced-installation.html for setting up RAID with 9.10

Phill.

Thanks I will look that over off line and give it a try.

I still suspect the root cause is that the initrd has no md devices as it is generated by some magic at install time based on what is running at the time.

[gearheadgeek]

But, to answer your question for 9.10, you can head over to https://help.ubuntu.com/9.10/serverguide/C/advanced-installation.html for setting up RAID with 9.10
Phill.

No, that didn't help. There was no option for raid install with the only path I could take, since I could not repartition my working system. I took apart the initrd and it was missing raid drivers, but adding raid1.ko didn't help.

However, you are not going to believe what did work. Well, maybe you will. I guess I do after the strangeness I have seen in the past couple days fighting with Ubuntu. On a hunch, I used the same dvd - the 9.10 desktop install - and chose text install instead of the normal gui install. Now Ubuntu could see my raid partitions and allowed me to install to a free one. I already had an entry in grub so rebooted, and up came 9.10 desktop. Crazy.

Carl