On Fri, Sep 06, 2013 at 02:29:55PM +0200, Robin Kipp wrote:If you're getting an error saying root couldn't be mounted then I'm
> Hi list,
> I just purchased an HP ProLiant Micro Server G2020T. As for the hard drives, I installed 4 3TB Western Digital HDs. So far so good, but volumes with a capacity greater than 2TB require a GPT partition table. Unfortunately, the server does not support UEFI, and thus can't boot from GPT partitions natively.
> So, when I ran the Debian installer, I used the following partitioning scheme on all drives since I wanted to combine them in a software RAID:
>
> 1MB BIOS Boot Partition (BBP) for GRUB
> 512MB dedicated /boot partition
> partition with all the remaining disk space.
>
> I then proceeded to setup software RAID:
> no RAID on the 1MB BIOS boot partition (not sure if this is correct)
> RAID1 for the 512MB /boot partition including all the HDs.
> RAID5 for the large partition that remained for file storage.
> I then set up the /boot partition (/dev/md0) to contain an EXT3 file system and also configured the mount point to be / boot.
> For the large partition, I setup LVM and created logical volumes for the root and SWAP partition. I also configured those partitions accordingly so the installer would know how to use them.
> Once I finished, the installation went through without any problems. After the system was installed, I used the 'Install the GRUB boot loader' option to install GRUB on all HDS (/dev/sda through /dev/sdd), which worked just fine.
> However, when I rebooted the system I got an error message saying the root file system could not be mounted. I suspected the LVM to cause issues, so I re-installed everything but this time without LVM. Unfortunately, the same issue persists… Has anyone here ever been in a similar situation and could suggest a fix? I have a feeling I may be missing something important, but just can't find the right path to take…
assuming that:
- BIOS has found GRUB
- GRUB has found the kernel
- the kernel has booted BUT
- the kernel couldn't find the rootfs, so therefore couldn't start init
If that's the case, try adding "rootdelay=30" to your kernel command
line (the best way is to append it to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX in
/etc/default/grub and re-run update-grub", but you can temporarily add
it at grub's command line editor).
"rootdelay" should cause the kernel to wait a few moments for all drives
to become ready, the raid to assemble and so on, before it tries to
mount rootfs.