Ubuntu Trusty Tahr cannot boot on RAID5 array

[David Lee]

Raid array is three identical Western Digital Green series 500GB hard drives on an NVIDIA controller set to RAID5 for a total of 1TiB (931.52GB) storage.

Installation was done using the Ubuntu LiveCD.

Partitions on the filesystem was created beforehand using gparted. The partition table is set up to be GPT with a 8MB bios_grub partition, a 256MB fat32 EFIBoot partition (not used for this setup, board does not support EFI and is expected to boot from the bios_grub legacy partition), a 4GB swap, 80GB root partition, and the rest for /home. Then the installer is invoked and the partitions are set up. GRUB is told to install to the root of the RAID array in /dev/mapper . The installation went flawlessly.

Upon reboot, GRUB loads as expected, and loads the kernel and initrd as expected. However, the kernel gives up on waiting for the root partition and drops to initramfs busybox. "dmesg|grep device" shows the following errors:

device-mapper: table: 252:0: raid: unknown target type
device-mapper: ioctl: error adding target to table

Trying to invoke dmraid -a y results in the following error:
ERROR: device-mapper target type "raid" is not in the kernel
RAID set "nvidia_babddecf" was not activated.

nvidia_babddecf is the assigned volume name by the controller.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1313169/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[David Lee (ramchyld)]

Added Linux-image-3.13.0-24-generic as affected package given the error in dmesg.

[David Lee (ramchyld)]

I've managed to fix the installation so that the system will boot.

Steps to fix:
1. Boot from LiveCD
2. switch over to console ( [Ctrl]+[Super]+[F1] ) and do ' lsmod | grep raid '
3. mount the raid array to /mnt:
4. chroot /mnt
5. modify /etc/initramfs-tools/modules to include the modules listed in step 2 above.
6. rebuild initrd using mkinitramfs ( ' mkinitramfs -o /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic 3.13.0-24-generic ' )
7. reinstall grub ( ' update-grub && grub-install /dev/mapper/<mapper-name> ' )
8. exit chroot
9. reboot
10. Profit!

List of modules displayed by the lsmod | grep raid :
raid0
dm_raid
raid1
raid10
raid456
async_raid6_recov
async_memcpy
async_pq
async_tx
raid6_pq

it seems pretty silly that the above aren't included in the default image, as they're required to boot a RAID array.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 1313169

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[David Lee (ramchyld)]

Generating a logfile is not possible as the system was not able to get to the upstart stage to start logging services, as the system will drop to initramfs busybox. I also do not have the necessary tools to log the kernel through serial. Will mark as confirmed as requested.

However, as mentioned before, I've devised a workaround. How the workaround should be carried out is up to the kernel maintainers- should the modules be listed in /etc/initramfs-tools/modules from the start, or should those lines be injected into /etc/initramfs-tools/modules by the dm-raid installation script when dm-raid is installed.

[David Lee (ramchyld)]

Setting to confirmed as per request of Brad Figg.

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Thank you for taking the time to file a bug report on this issue.

However, given the number of bugs that the Kernel Team receives during any development cycle it is impossible for us to review them all. Therefore, we occasionally resort to using automated bots to request further testing. This is such a request.

  With the recent release of this Ubuntu release, would like to confirm if this bug is still present. Please test again with the newer kernel and indicate in the bug if this issue still exists or not.

You can update to the latest development kernel by simply running the following commands in a terminal window:

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If the bug still exists, change the bug status from Incomplete to Confirmed. If the bug no longer exists, change the bug status from Incomplete to Fix Released.

If you want this bot to quit automatically requesting kernel tests, add a tag named: bot-stop-nagging.

 Thank you for your help, we really do appreciate it.

[David Lee (ramchyld)]

Hi,

As I've already made the permanent changes by hand to my Ubuntu installation, I am unable to check if the subsequent kernel versions have this issue fixed without performing a clean reinstall, which I am unwilling to do at the moment. Please confirm with the respective teams to ensure that the fix is in place. Thanks.

[John B. Anderson (johnbanderson)]

Having just attempted an upgrade to Tahr, I can confirm that the fix is NOT in place for linux-image-3.13.0-35-generic.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[David Lee (ramchyld)]

Followed up on bug 1683105 . I've worked out the exact thing that needs to be done.