Upgrading from Maverik to Natty has replaced mdadm with dmraid, making the system unbootable

[Yusef Maali]

Binary package hint: base-installer

I have upgraded from Maverik to Natty, x86_64 Desktop release.

After the upgrade, the initramfs was configured to load dmraid drivers instead mdadm driver, making the system fails to boot.

I have the following disk configuration:

/dev/sda
/dev/sda1 - NTFS
/dev/sda2 - raid partition (md0 - / - raid 0)
/dev/sda3 - ext2 (/boot)

/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb1 - raid partition (md1 - /home - raid 1)

/dev/sdc
/dev/sdc1 - NTFS
/dev/sdc2 - raid partition (md0 - / - raid 0)
/dev/sdc3 - swapfs

/dev/sdd
/dev/sdd1 - raid partition (md1 - /home - raid 1)

Before the upgrade, the system booted from the /dev/sda3 partition and then mounted the md0 partition to continue the boot process.
After the upgrade the system was not able to see the mdX partitions, trying to mount a series of dm-X partitions, that made the boot process to fail in the very first stage.

I have booted the system with a live Natty x86_64, but I have had the same problem. The live was (and is) not able to see the mdadm partitions.
I solved the issue booting with a Maverik live (also Lucid works), that is able to correctly see the mdX partitions after having installed the mdadm package.

I have chrooted into the broken installation, purged the dmraid package and forced the re-installation of the mdadm package.

Now my upgraded Natty x86_64 is working like a charm :)
Please ask me for more information, if needed.

Thanks for your great work!
Yusef Maali