Re: [gentoo-user] boot problems

["J. Roeleveld" <joost@antarean.org>]

On Sunday, May 04, 2014 09:53:35 AM Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Saturday 03 May 2014 23:04:49 Stefan G. Weichinger wrote:
> > I spent nearly the whole day digging around this issue ...
> 
> You did better than I did recently: I spent four days at it.

For mission-critical systems, I would have done a clean re-install already 
with data copied back from a backup. More then 24 hours is a deadline.
For non-critical, I am willing to invest more time.

> > I wonder if I speak for more users when I say that all this is kind of
> > confusing sometimes ...
> 
> I'm with you there, Stefan. I find the whole RAID and LVM area deeply
> mysterious, and the docs I've seen only say what to do, not why. I'd still
> like to find a proper explanation of how it all works.

I used to have a howto bookmarked that gave more detail then the current step-
by-step examples. Unfortunately, that whole website disappeared about 5 or 6 
years ago.

Maybe check the old thread where Dale started with LVM. There is a lot of 
detail in there.

> > I am not so far to skip the initramfs -> I don't *know* that, I just
> > tested removing the line from grub2 and it failed finding the root-fs.
> 
> I've never had an initramfs, seeing no need in my case to keep /usr on its
> own partition.

Same here, until that whole mess started and I ended up using an initramfs.
At the same time, I moved everything except /boot onto RAID-0 for the 
desktops.

> > For booting from a plain partition on an SSD I think I shouldn't need an
> > initramfs? Does it have to do with MBR/GPT as well (the SSD is
> > still/again MBR, as UEFI booting broke badly for me back then) ?
> 
> As far as I know, the only thing that /requires/ an initramfs is having a
> separate /usr. And I can't help you with GPT or UEFI - sorry.

A seperate " /usr " or " / " on LVM.

> > Maybe I learn more soon ;-)
> 
> I sometimes say that life is just one long journey of discovery  :-)

It is. And that's what makes life interesting.

--
Joost