Comment 28 for bug 120375

I've forgotten about how this works exactly, but if you take a look in:

/usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local

If you look for the comment
# We've given up, but we'll let the user fix matters if they canomment:

The bit inside the while loop with the panic is the part that gets executed if there is a timeout trying to mount root. Here's what I put in my Fiesty version right before that comment.

 if [ ! -e "${ROOT}" ]; then
  # Try mdadm in degraded mode in case some drive has failed.
  /scripts/local-top/mdadm
 fi

This doesn't work anymore because of the changes to Gutsy. You could just try putting 'mdadm --assemble --scan' there, but that probably won't work. Everything is a little tricky in these scripts because they run before root is mounted, so stuff doesn't always work as you would expect.

Also, you can't just modify these scripts. After you change them, you have to use 'mkinitramfs' to generate the image that contains these scripts that is used during the boot up. I'd put in instructions, but I've forgotten how to do it myself.