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Re: RAID1 on sarge fail on boot, work manually postboot.



On Wednesday 06 April 2005 03:25 pm, Christine600 wrote:
>tem boots up. If I then login as root and
>
> mdrun
> mount /dev/md0
>
> ...then everything works fine.
>
i have had experience with doing this too.
Here is what I found.

You must have the correct modules in the kernel at the time of kernel boot. 
How to do this?

Hard way: compile a new kernel. This is not appropriate for a newbie.

If you are a newbie: (such as me) and don't want to compile a new kernel each 
time you install a new sytem or upgrade a system kernel, then the right tool 
to use is mkinitrd. This is what the debian installer does. It is the RIGHT 
beginner way. 

what this does is creates a initrd. Ie something like

initrd.img-2.6.8-1-386  
initrd.img-2.6.9-1-386 

these live in your /boot directory along with 
say vmlinuz-2.6.9-1-386

and it contains all the kernel modules that you need to run your system. Your 
system boots from this and then runs with the modules later on.

The reason you need this is that during the initial boot up of your system 
while your system runs through the scripts in /etc/rcS.d (before the scripts 
in /etc/rc2.d),  it runs the following scripts
S24raid2
S25mdadm-raid 
S30checkfs.sh

Now if the first 2 fail (or whichever you have on your system) then the third 
will fail and you will drop to the fix prompt you have gotten.

Ie: your system needs to have modules such as "ext3 and jbd" to get access to 
the  ext3 file system, as well as the modules"md" "raid1"  to address your 
raid1.

Additionally, if your raid is  not on your motherboard, but on some other 
device that has a special driver, you need to have that driver loaded in 
initrd.img-2.6.8-1-386 too.

You need to know what drivers need to be in initrd. 

For instance on one of my systems I have the need for 
via82cxxx, hpt366 pdc202xx_new pdc202xx_old 
to find the ide controllers that  I added to my sytem that have the ide drives 
that my raid  lives on. If your had a 3ware or other device your would need 
them too. 
in addition to the modules raid1 and md.

So one thing to try is the following.

Lets assume you are not using SATA raid1. If you are I dont know what modules 
to use. Then lets first try with  md and raid1 modules alone.

so edit the file /etc/mkinitrd/modules with vi or emacs or joe and put the 
following lines there at the end of the file
md
raid1
ext3
jbd

Then lets assume you are using the debian 2.6.8-1-386 kernel
(check by typeing uname -a )

then do ls /lib/modules
you should see a directory 2.6.8-1-386 in that directory.
Next you go to the /boot directory and do this 
mkinitrd        -o       initrd.img-2.6.8-1-386-christine        2.6.8-1-386
notice the 2 strategically placed spaces in that line  and notice that i have 
renamed the initrd.img  after you. If you 
were to do mkinitrd -o initrd.img-2.6.8-1-386  2.6.8-1-386 
(which is what is normal to do), it will overwrite the initrd that you already 
have with that name in your /boot directory, which would potentially mess you 
up more than you are.

now make a new stanza in /boot/grub/menu.lst that replaces the lines

title           Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.9-1-386
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1-386 root=/dev/hda2 ro
initrd          /initrd.img-2.6.9-1-386
savedefault
boot

with 

title           Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.9-1-386
root            (hd0,0)
kernel          /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1-386 root=/dev/hda2 ro
initrd          /initrd.img-2.6.9-1-386-christine
savedefault
boot

(or similar).

then boot using this version and see if the raid works. If so make it the 
default boot stanza. If not report back with a copy of dmesg 
which modules you have reported in dmesg that you need 
to address your ide controllers.

Good luck

Mitchell






> The RAID1 was created on a Mandrake10, and the disks moved over when I
> read about debian and apt-get. :-)
>
> I have done apt update/ugrade.
> I have read
> http://www.justenoughlinux.com/2004/03/28/fixing_a_busted_raid.html I have
> read http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-hppa@lists.debian.org/msg04228.html
>
> ...but still no clue
>
>
> Anything else I can try?
>
> Christine



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