On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 1:06 PM, Kerin Millar <kerfra...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 04/04/2010 20:52, Mark Knecht wrote: >> >> So this suggests that because I did the install from a running Gentoo >> chroot that the mknod commands didn't stick? Somehow they were part >> of, or because part of, the host Gentoo non-RAID install? Interesting. > > I don't know what the handbook says these days, but I understand that it's > lately taken to recommending a bind mount of /dev. If that's the case, then > none of the static device nodes that are contained with the /dev directory > within the stage3 tarball will actually make it on to the root filesystem > because, at the time of unpacking, they will be redirected to the (volatile) > tmpfs mount at /dev with respect to the livecd environment. > > From the point of view of the problem you're having, it may not even matter > but it's one thing to try anyway. > > It's interesting that the component disks are available. In principle, > there's no reason why the array should not be assembled. Here's an example > of how it looks during the boot process on one of my systems: > > Command line: root=/dev/md2 > Kernel command line: root=/dev/md2 quiet > ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xcc30 ctl 0xcc28 bmdma 0xcc40 irq 23 > ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xcc38 ctl 0xcc2c bmdma 0xcc48 irq 23 <SNIP> > > You might consider disabling the framebuffer temporarily, as it may impact > upon your ability to see what's going on early during the boot process. > > Cheers, > > --Kerin
Hi Kerin, First, thanks for sticking with me on this. I really appreciate it. Second, I apologize for the length of the reply but it's still not working and I wanted to try and clearly show the steps I've taken. Maybe you or someone else will see the step I'm missing. OK, more and more it's looking to me like on the RAID I'm just not getting the /devmdX special file that has to be there to mount/bind/whatever the hardware to. What creates it, other than mknod? Can I do it by hand some other way? Read on... 1) Booted non-RAID and look in /dev for md*. md0 is there. I mount the RAID and look in the directory /mnt/gentoo/dev/ for anything named md*. There's nothing. 2) Booting with the Live CD I modprobe raid1, assemble the RAID, and then do the recommended chroot: livecd usr # cd / livecd / # mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc livecd / # mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev livecd / # cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/ livecd / # chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash livecd / # env-update && source /etc/profile 3) I look in /dev and still no md*. (There shouldn't be) 4) Because I used md3 to get into the RAID from the Live CD I create some new devices, but specifically don't do md3: livecd / # mknod /dev/md0 b 9 0 livecd / # mknod /dev/md1 b 9 1 livecd / # mknod /dev/md2 b 9 2 livecd / # mknod /dev/md4 b 9 4 livecd / # mknod /dev/md5 b 9 5 5) ls the directory and I see the ones I created plus md3 bound from the chroot above: livecd / # ls /dev/md* /dev/md0 /dev/md1 /dev/md2 /dev/md3 /dev/md4 /dev/md5 /dev/md: 3 6) I exit the chroot and look again at what's now in the Live CD /dev. As expected I still see all 6. livecd / # exit exit livecd ~ # ls /dev/md* /dev/md0 /dev/md1 /dev/md2 /dev/md3 /dev/md4 /dev/md5 /dev/md: 3 livecd ~ # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on tmpfs 3052532 29600 3022932 1% / /dev/sr0 117392 117392 0 100% /mnt/cdrom /dev/loop0 87424 87424 0 100% /mnt/livecd udev 10240 216 10024 3% /dev tmpfs 3052532 6152 3046380 1% /mnt/livecd/lib64/firmware tmpfs 3052532 0 3052532 0% /mnt/livecd/usr/portage /dev/md3 30969528 2254188 27142180 8% /mnt/gentoo livecd ~ # 7) Try booting RAID a couple of times with different command line options. It still fails the same way. 8) Boot back to non-RAID and mount the RAID, this time as md0 just to be different. I look in /dev and see only md0, as expected: keeper ~ # df Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/sda3 30969600 7244840 22151596 25% / udev 10240 228 10012 3% /dev shm 3053512 0 3053512 0% /dev/shm /dev/md0 30969528 2254188 27142180 8% /mnt/gentoo keeper ~ # ls /dev/md* /dev/md0 /dev/md: 0 keeper ~ # 9) I look in /mnt/gentoo/dev to see if ANY md special files are there. There are none: keeper ~ # ls -al /mnt/gentoo/dev/md* ls: cannot access /mnt/gentoo/dev/md*: No such file or directory keeper ~ # All the other stuff is there, but not the special files I created while in the chroot. So, to me, this comes down to something like when I'm booting /dev/md0 or md3 isn't available so the kernel cannot mount the RAID anywhere. What creates the special file, at least by hand, is mknod, and for some reason I'm unable to make that work for me. Either there's something weird about doing this on RAID, or there's something stupid that I'm still doing. (I vote for the latter although I've been doing it for days so I probably cannot even see it anymore.) I guess I would hope that some piece of software is supposed to make these special files on the fly when booting if they don't exist. Maybe that's the purpose of appending md=0,/dev/sdb3,/dev/sdc3 but even that's not working for me. Maybe that points to something in kernel config that turns that on? I don't know. Note that in the Gentoo RAID install guide that I'm following the only mknod step is pre-chroot so nothing in the final RAID design ever does that by hand. If that guide actually results in a working system http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86+raid+lvm2-quickinstall.xml I've tried all the boot options shown at the end. I don't know what to try next. Cheers, Mark RAID fstab: /dev/sda1 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 2 /dev/md0 / ext3 noatime 0 1 /dev/sda2 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/sdb2 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/sdc2 none swap sw 0 0 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,ro 0 0 grub.conf: default 0 timeout 30 splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz title /dev/sda1 Gentoo Linux 2.6.33-gentoo root (hd0,0) kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage-2.6.33-gentoo root=/dev/sda3 title /dev/sda1 Gentoo Linux 2.6.33-gentoo-RAID using md0 root (hd0,0) kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage-2.6.33-gentoo-RAID root=/dev/md0 title /dev/sda1 Gentoo Linux 2.6.33-gentoo-RAID using md3 root (hd0,0) kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage-2.6.33-gentoo-RAID root=/dev/md3 title /dev/sda1 Gentoo Linux 2.6.33-gentoo-RAID explicit md0=... root (hd0,0) kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage-2.6.33-gentoo-RAID root=/dev/md0 md=0,/dev/sdb3,/dev/sdc3 title /dev/sda1 Gentoo Linux 2.6.33-gentoo-RAID explicit md3=... root (hd0,0) kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage-2.6.33-gentoo-RAID root=/dev/md3 md=3,/dev/sdb3,/dev/sdc3 title /dev/sda1 Gentoo Linux 2.6.33-gentoo-RAID sdb3 only root (hd0,0) kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage-2.6.33-gentoo-RAID root=/dev/sdb3 title /dev/sda1 Gentoo Linux 2.6.33-gentoo-RAID sdc3 only root (hd0,0) kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage-2.6.33-gentoo-RAID root=/dev/sdc3
