On 07/25/2013 12:54 PM, Patrick Goetz wrote:
Hi -
I'm bringing this issue to the attention of this list in the hopes of
finding out where it is most appropriately addressed.
I've recently done a number of server installs using mostly the 13.10
64-bit pre-release ISO, but also testing the problem I'm about to
mention using 12.10 and 13.04.
My current server build strategy, which I think is becoming fairly
common, is to use 2 SSDs in a software RAID 1 for OS/swap and the
either hardware RAID or another software RAID using traditional large
disks for data. The problem seems to be with server hardware which
includes a BIOS fakeraid (in particular when fakeraid is turned off --
fakeraid on doesn't seem to work, either, with exactly the same
symptoms). The symptoms are the OS installs, grub seems to
successfully install on /dev/md0 or /dev/md127 (whichever md device
exists in /dev at the time of the install), but then the system won't
boot. In the latest case, I can't even get to a grub rescue prompt -
the screen just hangs with a blinking dash. When I do get a grub
rescue prompt (previous attempts on other hardware), it doesn't do
anything; i.e the grub commands don't work.
The reason I suspect the fakeraid HBA is that recently I installed 2
superMicro servers, one from 2011 with no fakeraid, a more recent one
which does include fakeraid. 13.10 installed with no problems on the
older machine, but won't boot on the newer one as described above. In
another case I had almost the same problem with a Dell server which
similarly came with an HBA with fakeraid. The Dell server predates
UEFI, so I'm ruling this out as a source of the problem.
The problem is subsequently resolved using the boot-repair package
from ppa:yannubuntu; i.e. I boot 13.04 live, install and run
boot-repair, and subsequently all is well.
My question is, why isn't the installer getting the grub install right
in the first place?
I tried taking this issue to the #ubuntu-server IRC, but that seems to
be a wasteland of people who are at best extremely inexperienced
asking questions about how to use bash and stuff like that.
Since the problem also occurs with the 12.10 and 13.04 server ISO's,
I'm not sure that logging a bug on launchpad is the right way to go --
the problem is not 13.10 specific. My next step is to make a note of
all the grub configuration information after the initial installation
and then compare it to the modifications made by boot-repair (which is
a superb piece of work, btw).
Any thoughts on a better forum to take this issue to?
Reporting a bug for this is the way to go, and you can go a long way if
your able to follow this guide for debugging a bit as to what's going on
in your setup.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingUbiquity
I'm also curious if the alternate installer causes you similar issues or
not.
On the bug filing thing, yes please file and if it affects 12.04-13.10,
well we can mark it as such and apply a fix to each ;-)
Cheers,
Nicholas
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