Re: Testing Netinst AMD64 CD fails to create MD devices for RAID1

[Marc D Ronell <mronell@alumni.upenn.edu>]

>>>>> "Camaleón" == Camaleón  <noelamac@gmail.com> writes:

    Camaleón> On Sat, 25 Jun 2011 08:38:15 -0400, Marc D Ronell wrote:
    >> There seems to be a bug with software RAID1 in the 06/21/2011
    >> version of the Testing Netinst AMD64 CD image.  Separate
    >> partitions can be linked to create the md devices, but then one
    >> or the other of the two md devices fails after the initial sync
    >> is attempted.  So the failure is occurring before the resulting
    >> raid partitions are used.  They fail without being formated,
    >> labeled, etc.  It is not possible to proceed with the rest of
    >> the Debian installation.

    Camaleón> (...)

    >> Anyone have a good work around?

    Camaleón> How about making the raid before installing Debian?

    Camaleón> Or maybe trying with another netinst image? This one is
    Camaleón> from 2011-06-25:

    Camaleón> http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/wheezy_d-i/current/amd64/iso-cd/

    Camaleón> And this one uses sid's installer:

    Camaleón> http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/daily-builds/daily.new/current/amd64/iso-cd/

Camaleon,

Thanks for the pointer to the image with the sid installer above. That
basically worked.  I found a couple of issues, I think, which might
be useful to change on the installer.  One is that the md devices took
a long time to sync as each was DELAYED.  Installing an internal
bitmap on each device sped up the sync process and allowed the devices
to be usable:

    # mdadm -G /dev/md1 --bitmap=internal

After each md device synced, I installed the internal bitmap and that
might have helped to stabilize the devices.  From there I was able to
format the md devices with xfs.

A second  issue is  that the /etc/lilo.conf  file did not  specify the
initrd  image which  was  put in  the  /boot directory  by the  Debian
installer.  Once  that configuration line was added  to lilo.conf, the
boot loader installed and worked, the  only other issue was to be sure
that the  md device selected  for the lilo  install had to  be version
0.90 as opposed to version 1.2.

Hope that  helps someone  and thanks for  the suggestion of  using the
image with the sid installer.

Marc