created initramfs cannot boot system with raid on nvidia - Jaunty Beta - 2.6.28-11

[Sachin Garg]

Binary package hint: initramfs-tools

I have a GeForce7050M-M with a Phenom X3 processor. Currently running Intrepid 2.6.27-13-generic AMD64. The system has two hard disks configured as RAID 1 using the motherboard RAID (I know its fake RAID). The system is further configured with LVM2.

Things work fine with the Intrepid kernel 2.6.27-13-generic. Menu.lst says things like:

title Ubuntu jaunty (development branch), kernel 2.6.27-13-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-13-generic root=/dev/mapper/nvidia_gdcfaafd2 iommu=noaperture ro iommu=noaperture splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-13-generic

When booting with the 2.6.28-11 kernel, initramfs is *not* able to find the root device and times out.

There are substantial differences in the size of the initrd for 2.6.27-13 and 2.6.28-11 which suggests that the initramfs is not having all the modules.

[Sachin Garg (sgarg-bugreporter)]

Was able to boot 2.6.28-11 using "initrd.img-2.6.27-13-generic"

chanakya:~$ uname -a
Linux chanakya 2.6.28-11-generic #40-Ubuntu SMP Fri Apr 3 17:39:41 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux

chanakya:~$ ls -al /boot/initrd.img-2.6.2*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9320843 2009-01-30 14:40 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6399859 2009-01-30 14:40 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-server
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9320778 2009-02-22 21:28 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-12-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6400297 2009-02-22 21:27 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-12-server
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9320581 2009-03-05 11:37 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-13-generic
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6558642 2009-04-07 16:10 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-13-server
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8635079 2009-04-07 20:21 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic

Note the substantial size difference between the non-working "initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic" (8.7M) and the working "initrd.img-2.6.27-13-generic" at 9.4M

[Sachin Garg (sgarg-bugreporter)]

The created initramfs for kernel 2.6.28-11 is missing the following modules:

/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/kernel/drivers/md/dm-log.ko
/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/kernel/drivers/md/dm-mirror.ko
/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/kernel/drivers/md/dm-mod.ko
/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/kernel/drivers/md/dm-multipath.ko
/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/kernel/drivers/md/dm-round-robin.ko
/lib/modules/<kernel-version>/kernel/drivers/md/dm-snapshot.ko

that is *all* dm modules except dm-crypt.ko and dm-zero.ko

$ grep CONFIG_DM_MIRROR /boot/config-2.6.27-13-generic
CONFIG_DM_MIRROR=m
$ grep CONFIG_DM_MIRROR /boot/config-2.6.28-11-generic
CONFIG_DM_MIRROR=y

so, mirroring is built into the kernel in 2.6.28-11

So, why is my Mirrored RAID not working??

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Sachin,

You may want to take a look at bug 35897, particularly https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/358971/comments/1 .

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Marking this a duplicate of bug 358255. Lets use that report to track this issue. Thanks.