Comment 73 for bug 631795

hi Phillip,

This machine (the intel chipset one) has 2 discs in raid1, so a mirrored
set.
 From Lucid to Maverick was an inplace upgrade through upgrade manager.
That left the machine non bootable so I put a USB stick in and booted
Natty server (32-bits). Installed Natty from the stick but without
formatting existing partitions.
Same result: not booting, so again booting from USB, rescue a broken
system, drop into a root shell, grub-install on
/dev/mapper/isw_cfaeccihhh_RAID_MIKE.
That fixed the booting side of things.

I would expect Grub to know and use (or offer the option to use) the
manually installed location because such a deviation would be done to
correct a problem such as mine. It would likely be the last known
working configuration, and resetting to a previous location should not
be done without at least asking me.
As I understand you this would mean that a defect in the automatic
installation long time ago would still be coming back on every upgrade /
re-install?

The moaning and groaning during boot used not to be too serious,
depending on what device couldn't be found. If /home, swap or DATA yes,
then it would pull through and boot. If / then no joy, busybox and
reboot, try again.
So I guess yes it is relevant, or at least a symptom.

I'll see what information I can get for you later this week (any
specific logs you would like to see?)
If I find time next weekend I'll do a full install, formatting the fs
and all, of both Maverick and Natty, see what happens and report back.

cheers
Tom

PS: The other machine, which is the one that I started this bug report
with, has a Promise Fasttrak chipset, 2 discs in a striped set ,raid0,
Maverick 32bits. It's been non-usable since jan18th, but I can get it
into a running state, so if you want logs or other info on that one, plz
ask.
If need be I can do a full re-install on this machine as well, since I
do have /home and DATA on separate partitions. Thing is that on Maverick
Gparted is still 0.6x and the problem with dmraid was fixed in Gparted
0.7 so formatting the partitions won't work and needs to be done from a
separate session booting off either a Gparted or a Natty CD.
I realise it's a bit messy to report on 2 separate machines in one
thread, but they share the same behaviour and they are both running dmraid.