On Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:43:38 +0100, Robert Millan wrote: > On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 09:36:45PM +0000, Sam Morris wrote: >> Hi there, >> >> A while ago, I tried grub2 on my Debian system, which has my root >> filesystem on a Linux software RAID-1 array. I ran into some problems, >> and while they were raised here, nothing really came of them. Robert >> Millan suggested I post my problem again to see if anything can be done >> to fix it. >> >> I think my problems stem from the Promise IDE controller that my second >> disk is connected to. It does not support 48-bit LBA addressing, and so >> any attempt to read the end of the disk using BIOS calls will fail. Of >> course, once an operating system has loaded its own driver for the >> controller, the disk can be read correctly. >> >> Here's what the two disks look like: >> >> Model: Maxtor 6L300R0 (ide) >> Disk /dev/hdb: 300GB >> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: >> msdos >> >> Number Start End Size Type File system Flags >> 1 32.3kB 543MB 543MB primary >> 2 543MB 300GB 300GB primary ext3 raid >> >> The first partition is swap, the second is the root filesystem. >> >> The first problem is the operation of the grub-probe partition. >> Debian's post-install script runs the following command to determine >> which modules to include in the generated core.img file: >> >> grub-probe --target=partmap --device-map=/boot/grub/device.map >> /boot/grub >> >> Which fails with the error: >> >> grub-probe: error: Cannot detect partition map for md0 >> >> It appears that grub-probe expects to find a partition table inside the >> RAID device, when of course, it is really in its containing device, >> /dev/hdb. > > This is a known problem, and I roughly have a solution in mind, but I > haven't been able to reproduce it. When I try to install Debian with > /boot inside an LVM, the installer hangs. This option doesn't seem to > be supported at all.
Ouch... I have never tried /boot on LVM myself (since grub legacy can't handle it). However /boot on RAID works fine, I suggest you try that instead. > > Furthermore, how do you boot that system with GRUB Legacy? As far as grub1 is concerned, /dev/hdb2 is a normal partition containing an ext3 filesystem. > If you give me some details on how to reproduce the scheme in which > /boot is behind a lvm/raid abstraction, I could try to get this fixed. It's pretty simple, assuming you are using d-i. When partitioning, configure two disks with identical partition layouts (a single partition on each is sufficient). Then, tell partman that you want to use them as 'physical volumes for RAID'. A new option should appear, 'configure RAID' (or something similar). Here you can create a RAID1 array using both the partitions, which you can use as an ext3 filesystem, mounted at /. >> Debian's post-install script has actually been written to substitute >> 'pc gpt' if the partmap probing fails, > > Actually, this was reverted a while ago. > >> manually. However, I now hit the second problem: the menu that grub >> presents has no text! It seems to have an entry, however, as there is a >> highlighted line. > > Which version did you try? Is it more recent than 1.96 ? We fixed bugs > producing this result recently. Damn, I installed the version from testing by mistake. I will try again with version 1.96+20080203-1. >> Jeroen Dekkers previously suggested a patch to suppress the 'out of >> disk' error, at >> <http://www.mail-archive.com/grub-devel@gnu.org/msg02873.html> but no >> one ever committed it. > > Ah, I see. The patch looks correct to me; only the description you > gave before isn't. Hmm, I don't understand the difference between your changelog entry and my description, but ok. :) -- Sam Morris http://robots.org.uk/ PGP key id 1024D/5EA01078 3412 EA18 1277 354B 991B C869 B219 7FDB 5EA0 1078 _______________________________________________ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
