Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[andy liebman]

Thanks for the reply, Luca

> On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 07:51:42PM -0400, andy liebman wrote:
>>-- I copied the contents of /dev/sda1 (/ partition) and /dev/sda6 (/home 
>>partition) to /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb6 using rsync.
> this is not really important, but you should have used the raid devices
> as a target.

Sorry, I wrote this incorrectly. In my case, /dev/sdb1 = /dev/md1 and 
/dev/sdb6 = /dev/md2.  Remember, my md devices each have a drive missing 
at this point. I had the mdX devices started and mounted, and I rsynced 
from /dev/sda1 to /dev/md1, /dev/sda6 to /dev/md2.

> 
>>-- I edited fstab and lilo.conf on the the RAID1 "/" partition so that 
>>they would refer to /dev/md1
>>-- I ran chroot on the /dev/md1 partition
> did you mount /dev, /proc and /sys before chrooting?
> i.e
> mount --bind /dev /newroot/dev
> mount -t proc /proc /newroot/proc
> mount -t sysfs /sys /newroot/sys

Why do I have to do this? I haven't seen this in any "recipies". My 
Linux setup only has three partitions:   "/", swap, and "/home".

My experience with fixing bootloaders in the past is that I can boot up 
with a LIVE CD or rescue disk, chroot say into /dev/sda and run lilo 
right to fix the bootloader on /dev/sda. I do this when need to move my 
OS drive from an IDE to SATA or back again.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about mounting /dev, /proc 
and /sys.


Regards,
Andy Liebman
.

Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[Luca Berra]

On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 06:50:30AM -0400, andy liebman wrote:
>>>-- I edited fstab and lilo.conf on the the RAID1 "/" partition so that 
>>>they would refer to /dev/md1
>>>-- I ran chroot on the /dev/md1 partition
>>did you mount /dev, /proc and /sys before chrooting?
>>i.e
>>mount --bind /dev /newroot/dev
>>mount -t proc /proc /newroot/proc
>>mount -t sysfs /sys /newroot/sys
>
>Why do I have to do this? I haven't seen this in any "recipies". My 
you need it because mkinitrd will need info from /proc and /sys to work
correctly and lilo will try to access /proc/partitions and /dev/md1 if
your /boot is on /dev/md1.

>Linux setup only has three partitions:   "/", swap, and "/home".
/dev /proc and /sys are not disk based filesystems
/dev is a ram disk which is populated at runtime by udev
/proc and /sys are virtual filesystem that expose some of your hw and
kernel configuration to userspace

>I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about mounting /dev, /proc 
>and /sys.

just run:
mount --bind /dev /newroot/dev
mount -t proc /proc /newroot/proc
mount -t sysfs /sys /newroot/sys
before chrooting

L.
btw, be sure to add "auto=yes" to the ARRAY lines in /etc/mdadm.conf
or you might find some arrays are not recognized after boot.

L.


-- 
Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
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Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[andy liebman]

> 
>>I'm not sure I understand what you're saying about mounting /dev, /proc 
>>and /sys.
> 
> just run:
> mount --bind /dev /newroot/dev
> mount -t proc /proc /newroot/proc
> mount -t sysfs /sys /newroot/sys
> before chrooting
> 
> L.
> btw, be sure to add "auto=yes" to the ARRAY lines in /etc/mdadm.conf
> or you might find some arrays are not recognized after boot.
> 
> L.

Thank you Luca. That was helpful. I have a couple of other questions 
about Mandriva and mkinitrd. They probably don't belong on this list. 
But we're both here.

1)  I am running a custom-compiled 2.6.16.20 kernel on Mandriva 2006. 
When I run mkinitrd, I'm getting several messages "skip dups". Is that 
anything to be concerned about? I googled that and can't find anything.

2)  It seems the format of initrd's being made is cpio + gz. In other 
words, if I want to inspect the initrd, I cannot use the technique that 
I always used:

mkdir /tmp/initrd
cd initrd
cp /boot/newinitrd.img .
mv newinitrd.img newinitrd.ext2.gz
gunzip newinitrd.ext2.gz
mkdir mount
mount newinitrd.ext2 mount -o loop

That doesn't work anymore with the 2.6.16 kernel. Now I have to do:

mkdir /tmp/initrd
cd initrd
cp /boot/newinitrd.img .
mv newinitrd.img newinitrd.ext2.gz
gunzip newinitrd.ext2.gz
mkdir mount
cd mount
cpio -id < ../newinitrd.ext2


Does that make sense? Has the format changed for initrd's. I also 
noticed that the new initrds have a script called "init" instead of 
"linuxrc".

Andy

Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[Mark Hahn]

> Does that make sense? Has the format changed for initrd's. I also noticed 
> that the new initrds have a script called "init" instead of "linuxrc".

see Documentation/filesystems/ramfs-rootfs-initramfs.txt 
in the kernel sources.

Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[Justin Piszcz]

-- snip --

If you are using a custom compiled kernel, why on earth would you want to 
use an initrd?

Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[Nix]

On 16 Aug 2006, Justin Piszcz murmured woefully:
> 
> -- snip --
> 
> If you are using a custom compiled kernel, why on earth would you want to use an initrd?
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

Lack of understanding of initramfs? :) it's new and many distros don't
use it yet, so I can understand a bit of confusion.

Andy, you might want to look at
<http://linux-raid.osdl.org/index.php/RAID_Boot> for the initramfs setup
I use, based around uClibc and busybox. It can fsck-and-mount root
stored on RAID+LVM or on LVM alone, and with small adjustments should be
able to boot RAID alone with no LVM involved (I'll make those changes
shortly, I just haven't needed them myself).

-- 
`We're sysadmins. We deal with the inconceivable so often I can clearly 
 see the need to define levels of inconceivability.' --- Rik Steenwinkel

Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[andy liebman]

Hi,

I have spent the better part of this weekend struggling to get a SATA 
RAID1 array to boot in Mandriva 2006. I have read EVERYTHING I can find 
that's related. I'm stuck. Maybe somebody can point me in the right 
direction.

First, let me say it's not practical for me to compile all necessary 
drivers into the kernel. I realize that might make like easier.

So, here's the story in summary:

-- I have a motherboard with an ICH5 SATA chipset
-- My normal Mandriva installation boots off of SATA (in real SATA mode, 
not pretending to be IDE).
-- A while back, when I installed the bootloader on the single SATA 
drive, I chose to put it in the MBR and NOT on the first partition (I 
fear that might be part of the problem)
-- I added a second SATA drive, /dev/sdb, which came up fine.
-- I copied the partition layout from /dev/sda with sfdisk
-- I created two RAID1 devices from /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb6, with their 
counterparts "missing" (using mdadm)
-- I formated the two md devices with ext3
-- I rebooted with a LIVE CD version of Mandriva
-- I copied the contents of /dev/sda1 (/ partition) and /dev/sda6 (/home 
partition) to /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb6 using rsync.
-- I edited fstab and lilo.conf on the the RAID1 "/" partition so that 
they would refer to /dev/md1
-- I ran chroot on the /dev/md1 partition
-- I set up an /etc/mdadm.conf file (using mdadm --detail 
--scan>>/etc/mdadm.conf   -- that's where Mandriva puts it)
-- I added to lilo.conf "raid-extra-boot=  and tried both "mbr" and 
"/dev/sda,/dev/sdb"
-- I ran mkinitrd and created a new initrd in /boot on /dev/md1.  I got 
an error about not finding the 3w_9xxx driver, but I don't need to load 
that in the initrd anyway so I reran with --builtin=3w_9xxx so that 
mkinitrd would skip that driver that I don't need.

BUT, after all of this, I get a bunch of errors when I try to run lilo:
     Fatal: Trying to map files from unnamed device 0x0000

or

     trying map files unnamed


I tried putting an MBR on /dev/sdb with:
lilo -M /dev/sdb

I tried booting without /dev/sda and of course there's no bootloader on 
/dev/sdb so nothing happens.

Does anybody see a solution or see what I'm missing? Help would be 
appreciated. I can't believe this is so complicated! :(

Regards,
Andy Liebman

Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[Luca Berra]

On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 07:51:42PM -0400, andy liebman wrote:
>-- I copied the contents of /dev/sda1 (/ partition) and /dev/sda6 (/home 
>partition) to /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb6 using rsync.
this is not really important, but you should have used the raid devices
as a target.

>-- I edited fstab and lilo.conf on the the RAID1 "/" partition so that 
>they would refer to /dev/md1
>-- I ran chroot on the /dev/md1 partition
did you mount /dev, /proc and /sys before chrooting?
i.e
mount --bind /dev /newroot/dev
mount -t proc /proc /newroot/proc
mount -t sysfs /sys /newroot/sys

>-- I set up an /etc/mdadm.conf file (using mdadm --detail 
>--scan>>/etc/mdadm.conf   -- that's where Mandriva puts it)
>-- I added to lilo.conf "raid-extra-boot=  and tried both "mbr" and 
>"/dev/sda,/dev/sdb"
mbr should do

>-- I ran mkinitrd and created a new initrd in /boot on /dev/md1.  I got 
>an error about not finding the 3w_9xxx driver, but I don't need to load 
>that in the initrd anyway so I reran with --builtin=3w_9xxx so that 
>mkinitrd would skip that driver that I don't need.
>
>BUT, after all of this, I get a bunch of errors when I try to run lilo:
>     Fatal: Trying to map files from unnamed device 0x0000

Regards,
L.

-- 
Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
        Communication Media & Services S.r.l.
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Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[Henrik Holst]

Luca Berra wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 07:51:42PM -0400, andy liebman wrote:
>> -- I copied the contents of /dev/sda1 (/ partition) and /dev/sda6
>> (/home partition) to /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb6 using rsync.
> this is not really important, but you should have used the raid devices
> as a target.

Just a question. Did you copy the file system or the block device? I am
not familiar with rsync but I can think that it is a problem to sync the
file system so the block devices become 1:1 with each other.

Henrik Holst

Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[Laurent Lesage]

Hi Andy,

I did the same a few times (!) with a Debian stable. I found two pages 
with "recipes" that were convenient to me. For what could be related to 
you, I had to modify the "/etc/mkinirtd/mkinitrd.conf" file :
>
> If you are using a SATA drive you pay attention!
>
> edit /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf and change:
>
>     MODULES=most
>
> to
>
>     ###MODULES=most
>     MODULES=dep
>
> and
>
>     ROOT=probe
>
> to
>
>     ###ROOT=probe
>     ROOT="/dev/md2 jfs"
>
> This tells init to use what it takes to boot off of a raid device not 
> the /dev/sda device currently used. 
(modify according to your specs) The first part (mo=dep) is not 
mandatory (it just makes a smaller image), but the second is!

I took this form this page :
http://www.xtronics.com/reference/SATA-RAID-debian-for-2.6.html

this other page is useful if you want to use grub instead of lilo (but 
part of it is about IDE drive, which is not useful here) :
http://www.epimetrics.com/topics/one-page?page_id=421&topic=Bit-head%20Stuff&page_topic_id=120

hope that helps.

Laurent


andy liebman wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have spent the better part of this weekend struggling to get a SATA 
> RAID1 array to boot in Mandriva 2006. I have read EVERYTHING I can 
> find that's related. I'm stuck. Maybe somebody can point me in the 
> right direction.
>
> First, let me say it's not practical for me to compile all necessary 
> drivers into the kernel. I realize that might make like easier.
>
> So, here's the story in summary:
>
> -- I have a motherboard with an ICH5 SATA chipset
> -- My normal Mandriva installation boots off of SATA (in real SATA 
> mode, not pretending to be IDE).
> -- A while back, when I installed the bootloader on the single SATA 
> drive, I chose to put it in the MBR and NOT on the first partition (I 
> fear that might be part of the problem)
> -- I added a second SATA drive, /dev/sdb, which came up fine.
> -- I copied the partition layout from /dev/sda with sfdisk
> -- I created two RAID1 devices from /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb6, with 
> their counterparts "missing" (using mdadm)
> -- I formated the two md devices with ext3
> -- I rebooted with a LIVE CD version of Mandriva
> -- I copied the contents of /dev/sda1 (/ partition) and /dev/sda6 
> (/home partition) to /dev/sdb1 and /dev/sdb6 using rsync.
> -- I edited fstab and lilo.conf on the the RAID1 "/" partition so that 
> they would refer to /dev/md1
> -- I ran chroot on the /dev/md1 partition
> -- I set up an /etc/mdadm.conf file (using mdadm --detail 
> --scan>>/etc/mdadm.conf   -- that's where Mandriva puts it)
> -- I added to lilo.conf "raid-extra-boot=  and tried both "mbr" and 
> "/dev/sda,/dev/sdb"
> -- I ran mkinitrd and created a new initrd in /boot on /dev/md1.  I 
> got an error about not finding the 3w_9xxx driver, but I don't need to 
> load that in the initrd anyway so I reran with --builtin=3w_9xxx so 
> that mkinitrd would skip that driver that I don't need.
>
> BUT, after all of this, I get a bunch of errors when I try to run lilo:
>     Fatal: Trying to map files from unnamed device 0x0000
>
> or
>
>     trying map files unnamed
>
>
> I tried putting an MBR on /dev/sdb with:
> lilo -M /dev/sdb
>
> I tried booting without /dev/sda and of course there's no bootloader 
> on /dev/sdb so nothing happens.
>
> Does anybody see a solution or see what I'm missing? Help would be 
> appreciated. I can't believe this is so complicated! :(
>
> Regards,
> Andy Liebman
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>
>

Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[andy liebman]

laurent@lesagepono.be wrote:
> Hi Andy,
> 
> I did the same a few times (!) with a Debian stable. I found two pages 
> with "recipes" that were convenient to me. For what could be related to 
> you, I had to modify the "/etc/mkinirtd/mkinitrd.conf" file :
>>
>> If you are using a SATA drive you pay attention!
>>
>> edit /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf and change:
>>
>>     MODULES=most
>>
>> to
>>
>>     ###MODULES=most
>>     MODULES=dep
>>
>> and
>>
>>     ROOT=probe
>>
>> to
>>
>>     ###ROOT=probe
>>     ROOT="/dev/md2 jfs"
>>
>> This tells init to use what it takes to boot off of a raid device not 
>> the /dev/sda device currently used. 
> (modify according to your specs) The first part (mo=dep) is not 
> mandatory (it just makes a smaller image), but the second is!
> 

Thank you Laurent. I saw that in the same "how to" document. The problem 
is, Mandriva does NOT have a mkinitrd.conf.

I could create it, but I don't know if mkinitrd will use it! In 
Mandriva, it probably just has to be in /etc/ if if's useful at all.

Andy

Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[Laurent Lesage]

Hi Andy,

there are options for the "mkinitrd" command, that are like the 
parameters in "mkinitrd.conf" (this is the case in "Debian"). did you 
use the -root=xxx option?

Laurent

andy liebman wrote:
> laurent@lesagepono.be wrote:
>> Hi Andy,
>>
>> I did the same a few times (!) with a Debian stable. I found two 
>> pages with "recipes" that were convenient to me. For what could be 
>> related to you, I had to modify the "/etc/mkinirtd/mkinitrd.conf" file :
>>>
>>> If you are using a SATA drive you pay attention!
>>>
>>> edit /etc/mkinitrd/mkinitrd.conf and change:
>>>
>>>     MODULES=most
>>>
>>> to
>>>
>>>     ###MODULES=most
>>>     MODULES=dep
>>>
>>> and
>>>
>>>     ROOT=probe
>>>
>>> to
>>>
>>>     ###ROOT=probe
>>>     ROOT="/dev/md2 jfs"
>>>
>>> This tells init to use what it takes to boot off of a raid device 
>>> not the /dev/sda device currently used. 
>> (modify according to your specs) The first part (mo=dep) is not 
>> mandatory (it just makes a smaller image), but the second is!
>>
>
> Thank you Laurent. I saw that in the same "how to" document. The 
> problem is, Mandriva does NOT have a mkinitrd.conf.
>
> I could create it, but I don't know if mkinitrd will use it! In 
> Mandriva, it probably just has to be in /etc/ if if's useful at all.
>
> Andy
>
>

Re: Making bootable SATA RAID1 array in Mandriva 2006

[Luca Berra]

On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 05:13:47PM +0200, Laurent Lesage wrote:
>Hi Andy,
>
>there are options for the "mkinitrd" command, that are like the 
>parameters in "mkinitrd.conf" (this is the case in "Debian"). did you 
>use the -root=xxx option?

Laurent, 
mkinitrd in debian and mandriva are two completely different beasts,
there is no relation between those two.

besides that, i believe that all Andy has to do for mkinitrd is mounting
/sys on the chroot before running mkinitrd.

there is no mkinitrd.conf on mandriva.
mkinitrd will use fstab to find the root filesystem, so the change Andy
did is correct.

and please, please, stop top-posting and try to quote relevant parts of
messages when answering, or the thread will become unreadable.

L.

-- 
Luca Berra -- bluca@comedia.it
        Communication Media & Services S.r.l.
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