Michael Hampicke <mh@hadt.biz> wrote:
Am 20.10.2013 15:13, schrieb Mick:
On Sunday 20 Oct 2013 13:57:34 Michael Hampicke wrote:
Am 20.10.2013 11:54, schrieb Mick:
Any ideas why the Ubuntu installation won't boot?

My guess would be, you cannot boot, because if you install grub in
/dev/md0.

Upon boot the bios cannot find stage1 of the bootloader, which normally
lies in the MBR (which also houses the partition table).

I see ... so installing the MBR code in the /dev/md0 block device is further
down the disk than where BIOS is looking for it and that's why it errors out?


That would be my guess. Maybe someone more knowledgeable on how mdadm
writes stuff on the disk can jump in and provide additional info. But
I'm pretty sure, if you install grub in md0, it's not in that place on
the disk where the bios is actually looking for.


It seems to me then that I *have* to create normal partitions on /dev/sda &
/dev/sdb, or I would need a different boot drive. Is there another way to
overcome this problem.

Maybe create two mds. md1 (sda1, sdb1) is a small boot partition which
contains stage2+, the kernel and the initramfs. And md2 (sda2, sdb2)
which acts as another block device with partition table, etc...
In this setup you could install grub in the mbr of sda and sdb
(grub-install /dev/sda...)

A quick google on this subject returned no usable results. But I am off
now until tomorrow.


I would suggest trying it by usong the older metadata format.
Check the man pages, but I thinl it would be --metadata=0.90 (or similar) during creation.
That might put the metadata at the end, rather then at the front. (Or it's the other way round and new metadata does it at the end.)

--
Joost
Ps. I have never tried it this way (full disk raid for boot device) using linux software raid.
--
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.