Bug#388172: mkinitramfs indirectly invokes mdadm -Escpartitions; results can cause system to not boot
Package: initramfs-tools
Version: 0.79
The mkinitramfs script invokes the mdadm hook in
/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/. The hook, in turn, invokes the mdadm
script called mkconf, located at /usr/share/mdadm/mkconf.
The mkconf script calls `mdadm -Escpartitions`, which can produce
incorrect results in certain situations. These incorrect results,
incorporated into an initramfs that needs to mount RAID, could cause the
system to not boot. See Debian bug #386315 for more information.
If you're short on time, scroll down to my addendum to that bug report
from Sat, 09 Sep 2006 14:32:31 -0400. It shows the output of `mdadm
-Escpartitions` with two /dev/md0 devices and no /dev/md2 device.
My work-around was to run mkinitramfs with -k, which tells mkinitramfs
to keep the temporary files. Then, I changed the mdadm.conf in the
temporary directory to the correct configuration and recreated the
initramfs image by following the cpio and gzip steps near the end of the
mkinitramfs script.
This is certainly not something a novice would be able to do, so I
advise finding an alternative to `mdadm -Escpartitions` soon.
Colin
--
Colin W. Wetherbee
http://colinwetherbee.com/
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