On Tue, May 12, 2009 at 9:11 AM, martin f krafft <madd...@debian.org> wrote: > also sprach Tony Godshall <t...@of.net> [2009.05.11.2058 +0200]: >> They are *not*. That would seem to be the nub of the problem. No >> base partitions, thus no RAID. Good, thanks, that's progress. Might >> be good for md to report that that a little better (see screenshot). >> Oh, duh, I moved /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf out of the way. So it doesn't >> even know I have a RAID until it autodetects it, right? Oh, wait, in >> this initramfs environment there is an /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf, and it >> shows UUID and the 4-way RAID1. What, so the /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf >> inside the initrd is not from the kernel package but was built >> locally? Didn't realize that. > > It's copied from the main system when the initramfs is created, > unless it's faulty or doesn't represent the system or hasn't been > checked since the 2.5.3 upgrade. > > In the initramfs, if there is a config file, it's used. If there's > not a config file, mdadm scans all partitions and assembles them all > (like /sbin/mdadm-startall).
Yes, I see that it's optional, and actually rather pointless in my case since I'm booting off the RAID partition, unless grub reads mdadm.conf . But grub only reads /boot, not /etc, right? /etc would not be available until /etc/fstab is processed. > Thus, if you remove it in the initramfs, you basically tell the > system that you want it to scan, rather than search for the specific > UUID in the file. > >> Perhaps if I could figure out how to grab the dmesg output from >> initramfs environment, I could then compare the amd64 kernel >> output to the 686-bigmem kernel output... :-/ > > Append 'break=bottom debug' to the kernel line and at the shell do > something like > > mount -o remount,rw /root > cp /dev/.initramfs/initramfs.debug /root/root/initramfs-debug.foo > mount -o remount,ro /root > > and then find the file in /root once the system booted. Thanks! I'll try this on Thursday. Now that I have a better idea of what's going on during the boot process, I googled and found this: http://wiki.debian.org/InitramfsDebug Wish I'd found it earlier. I could have submitted a much better initial report. By the way, Martin, sometimes it's good to give people a little more "why" with the "do this", "do that". Or point them to a good wiki or faq. Bug reporters don't necessarily choose to be ignorant and a word to the wise-guy may save a bit of flame. ;-) Best Regards. Tony -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org