On 1/29/26 02:03, D. R. Evans wrote:
Alexander V. Makartsev wrote on 1/28/26 10:55 AM:
That is strange, how old is your hardware? When you mentioned 2013 I was
thinking 4th gen Intel CPU and Haswell-era hardware, which should
support USB-boot.
OK... on the basis of the fact that you expected USB boot to work, I
just went and spent some time messing with the boot options, and found
a way to make it work. What I had not realised was that it was not
enough to select "USB-HDD" from the BIOS list, but I also had to then
go and look at the hard drive boot order, where a new entry had
appeared (at a low priority). Once I saw that and changed its priority
so that it was the preferred boot device, the machine booted fine from
the USB drive.
All this, I'm sure, is very elementary stuff... but if one has never
encountered it before, as I have not, none of it was obvious.
So the next bit of your e-mail (about the motherboard and booting) no
longer applies.
I think it does.
Because with the last bits of information I can tell there is nothing
wrong with grub config file and OS config files (you did
"update-initramfs" and "dpkg-reconfigure" from previous email right?).
All partition\array UUIDs are detected by grub, they all match and at
their places across many config files and during boot time.
Your MD RAID1 setup is extremely ordinary, it should work without any
hickups, but it doesn't.
Except maybe weirdly configured and inactive array /dev/md127 on
/dev/sda1 which meant to be used as swap.
So, I'd continue by fixing it.
I still want to know the details about your motherboard. Maybe there is
a BIOS update, or this is known issue with larger AF disks and MBR style
partition table, you never know.
Everything I've suggested so far is something I would try myself, if I
had the same problem and conditions as you have.
...
I'll pause there, so you have a chance to look at that, and I have a
chance to look at the grub rescue stuff ... and also try put out
another (unrelated) urgent fire.
I imagine you could type at grub rescue prompt something like this:
grub> set pager=1
grub> insmod normal
grub> insmod part_msdos
grub> insmod diskfilter
grub> insmod mdraid1x
grub> insmod ext2
grub> ls
(proc) (hd0) (hd0,msdos1) (hd0,msdos2) (md/0)
grub> set prefix=(md/0)/boot/grub
grub> set root=(md/0)
grub> linux ($root)/boot/vmlinuz-6.12.63+deb13-amd64 root=/dev/md126
grub> initrd ($root)/boot/initrd.img-6.12.63+deb13-amd64
grub> boot
Note: your md devices could be named differently there, maybe not
"(md/0)" and "root=/dev/md126", because one of your raid1 arrays is not
functioning.
And you don't need to type "grub>", obviously..
--
With kindest regards, Alexander.
Debian - The universal operating system
https://www.debian.org
