10.04 server installer partitioner fails to create bootable RAID 1

[Geoff Ballinger]

Binary package hint: debian-installer

Hardware is a Dell Precision 450 with two fresh 500Gb drives installed. Installing from the 10.04 LTS server install CD.

* create two partitions on each disk, 4Gb at the end, and a single partition containing all the remaining space at the start - the latter marked bootable. All partitions tagged as RAID devices.
* configure software RAID with md0 a RAID 1 using the two big partitions as ext4 on /, and md1 using the two 4Gb partitions as swap.
* continue with the rest of the install as normal.

At the end of the install the system fails to boot due to being unable to mount /root in the bootloader.

There are a number of forums threads around this issue e.g.:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1474950&highlight=raid1&page=3

Workaround suggested in the forum is to do the partitioning (in exactly the same way) using the 8.04.4 LTS server install CD and then running the 10.04 installer and simply reformatting the existing RAID device to ext4. I can confirm that this works for my system though you have to delete all the dodgy md devices from the original attempts within the 10.04 installer first or they confuse the 8.04.4 installer.

[Unlogic (unlogic-unlogic)]

I can also confirm this issue. I recently installed two servers both with two 500GB drives configured using raid 1 with Linux software raid.

The installation goes smooth all the way but when I reboot afterwards I end up with a busybox and a nonworking raid setup.

If I partition the drives and create the raid using a Mandriva 2010.1 disc and then install Ubuntu 10.04 on top pf those partitions it works just fine.

I'm very surprised to see that the mighty Ubuntu distro is having such serious bugs, I hope this gets sorted out quickly!

[Unlogic (unlogic-unlogic)]

This bug i most likely a dupe of bug 569900.

[scrapper (microcontrollerfreak)]

can confirm this bug as well. Solution read on...

...
No init found. Try passing init= bootarg.

SOLVED this problem in a workaround:
BAD
Partitioning RAID 1:
sda1 sdb1 = /boot EXT4
sda5 sdb5 = / EXT4
sda6 sdb6 = /var EXT4
sda7 sdb7 = /home EXT4
sda8 sdb8 = /usr/local EXT4
sda9 sdb9 = /swap SWAP <--- Problem this will not work in Lucid Lynx!

GOOD
SOLUTION RAID:
sda1 sdb1 = /boot EXT4
sda5 sdb5 = / EXT4
sda6 sdb6 = /var EXT4
sda7 sdb7 = /home EXT4
sda8 sdb8 = /usr/local EXT4

NON-RAID:
sda9 sdb9 = /swap SWAP <--- Problem! don't put swap into RAID!
but they dont work in a RAID just one swap and another swap which extends the first one.
This solved my problem and i could install and boot Lucid Lynx.

After this i got another independent problem with ureadahead... at bootup... you will face this as well i guess. but thats another issue with Lucid Lynx. (you can solve ureadahead problem this way: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9555086&postcount=9)

than hopefully ubuntu server 10_04 lucid lynx will work!

greetings
scrapper

[scrapper (microcontrollerfreak)]

further information:

so SWAP is not in RAID now.
i have read somewhere else, that if swap is in RAID 1 and one of the two harddisks (both with swap) will fail,
the system will go down... even with RAID 1. (normally one would thinks the system will keep running because of RAID 1!
i can not confirm this, i have just read about it.
But if thats true, there is no reason why to put swap in RAID 1.

So until there is no possibilty to run swap in RAID 1,
ubuntu installer should inform that putting swap into RAID is a bad idea!

greetings
scrapper