Francesco Pietra wrote: > Bob Proulx wrote: > > After installing simply run the grub install script against both > > disks manually and then you will be assured that it has been > > installed on both disks. > > I had problems with that methodology and was unable to detect my error. > >From a thread on debian dated Mar 2, 2013: > ... > > grub-install /dev/sdb > > was reported by complete installation. No error, no warning. > > On rebooting, GRUB was no more found. Then entering in > > grub rescue > > > prefix/root/ were now wrong.
If the command does not work on the command line then it won't work from the installer either. The installer is doing the same things that you can do from the command line. Therefore asking if it is in the installer won't help. Because if it doesn't work then it doesn't work either place. If it does work then it will work either place. That is my conjecture at least. And since I have been using this feature I believe it does work. Works for me anyway. I have been using RAID1 for a long time and have not encountered the problem you describe. That doesn't mean that such an error doesn't occur. Just that I can't recreate it. Or rather after much user have never recreated it. This applies to both the good grub version 1 as well as the newer and IMNHO buggier grub version 2 rewrite. They are completely different from each other. Statements made about one do not apply to the other because it was a complete rewrite. But it is certainly possible that in your configuration that you have a case that does not work. I have a workbench with a variety of hardware. When I want to test something like this I construct a victim system in which to try the action. If you could do the same I think it would help to get to the root cause of the problem. I would create a victim machine with two drives for installation testing. Then test the installation. After install and reboot then shutdown, unplug one disk, test boot. Do not boot all of the way to the system. Simply boot to the grub menu and stop there. Then power off, switch disks, and test boot again. Do not boot all of the way to the system. Simply boot to the grub menu and again stop there. If you can get to the grub menu from either disk then grub has been installed on both disks. If not then plug both disks in and boot the system and test the grub-install script on the non-booting disk and then repeat the single disk boot. The reason to only boot to the grub menu is of course so that the RAID1 doesn't get split. If booting with one disk and then the other one disk it will get a split brain of course. No real problem on a victim machine. But it is faster to keep them in sync. So I only boot to the grub menu when testing the grub boot code. Avoiding booting the system avoids splitting the raid unnecessarily and speeds up the debugging. By testing this way you can verify that you can boot either disk in isolation after the other disk has failed. By using a victim machine you can experiment. Then if you find a bug you will have a recipe to recreate it and can file a bug report on it. Being able to recreate the problem is the most valuable part. And here is the challenge. I think if you do this you will find that it does actually work. But feel free to write back here and tell me that I am wrong and that there is a problem with it. :-) As the great Mark Twain wrote "There is nothing so annoying as a good example." If you can get to a repeatable test case that fails that would be awesome. > Now I am in the same situation, two servers with mirroring raid, grub on > /dev/sda only. Identical data on both servers to cope with grub on one disk > only. Not smart from my side. Two servers so that you can switch your services from one server to the other in case one of the servers cannot boot? If you have two servers and one is the hot spare for the other then perhaps after doing your own victim machine testing then you can perform the fix on the spare and test there. Then apply the fix to the running server. I think that should be a safe way to "sneak up" on the solution. Bob
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