Re: grub on ZRaid2

["Klaus Melchior" <kmel@gmx.de>]

Hi,

On Mon, 21 Oct 2013 12:12:47 +0100, Steven Chamberlain wrote:
> If using MSDOS, partman will automatically leave space before the first
> partition for the bootloader embedding area.  And to avoid Bug #651624:
> you should also try to leave 1MiB or more free space at the end of the
> disk - if you have 1999998 MB space then try to create a 1999997 MB ZFS
> partition.  Check in partman that there is "FREE SPACE" still shown.

I created an empty MSDOS partition table for each of the 4 discs.
Then I created a 2000GiB primary partition at the beginning of the available
space and set the partition usage to "physical volume for ZFS", not
bootable. This left me with about 400MB of FREE SPACE at the end of each
drive.

  /dev/ada0 - 2.0 TB Generic IDE
     #1  primary    2.0 TB    K  zfs
         pri/log  398.5 MB       FREE SPACE
  /dev/ada1 - ...

I created a new ZFS pool 'tank' as ZRAID2.
Then a ZFS logical volume 'tank/root' with a mountpoint to '/'.

  ZFS pool tank, volume root - 3.7 TB Unknown
     #1             3.7 TB    f  zfs           /
                   512.0 B       unusable

After the base system was installed grub-installer failed, shouldn't it
looking for /target/boot/grub ?

Oct 21 13:24:11 grub-installer: info: Installing grub on '/dev/ada0'
Oct 21 13:24:11 grub-installer: info: grub-install supports --no-floppy
Oct 21 13:24:11 grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target
rub-install  --no-floppy --force "/dev/ada0"
Oct 21 13:24:12 grub-installer: /usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot find a
device for /boot/grub (is /dev mounted?).
Oct 21 13:24:12 grub-installer: error: Running
'grub-install  --no-floppy --force "/dev/ada0"' failed.


> Or instead, you could use GPT partitions.  Actually I would recommend
> them for large (>=2TB) drives.  If using GPT, first create a tiny 1MiB
> BIOS Boot partition (for GRUB), then create the ZFS partition which
> could use 100% of the remaining space.  You will want to do the same on
> each disk, and later tell GRUB to install bootcode onto all disks.

I created GPT partitions on all 4 drives.

  /dev/ada0 - 2.0 TB Generic IDE
            1.0 MB       FREE SPACE
     #1     1.0 MB    f  biosgrub
     #2     2.0 TB    K  zfs
           73.2 kB       FREE SPACE
  /dev/ada1 - ...

After the ZFS pool and the ZFS partition was created, the base system was
installed.
grub-installer failed again.

Oct 21 15:02:05 grub-installer: info: Installing grub on '/dev/ada0'
Oct 21 15:02:05 grub-installer: info: grub-install supports --no-floppy
Oct 21 15:02:05 grub-installer: info: Running chroot /target
rub-install  --no-floppy --force "/dev/ada0"
Oct 21 15:02:05 grub-installer: /usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot find a
device for /boot/grub (is /dev mounted?).
Oct 21 15:02:05 grub-installer: error: Running
'grub-install  --no-floppy --force "/dev/ada0"' failed.


Regards,
Klaus

--
kmel@gmx.de