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unexpected grub breakage

Yes, I realize there is a *lot* of redundancy in that subject ;)

I'm running Grub legacy (1.x) and it worked perfectly until yesterday.
For the longest time now, I've had four WD SATA drives in my
workstation. They are split into a 100Mb RAID1 and a RAID5 taking up
all the rest of the space. Grub's /boot partition is on the RAID1,
while / is on the RAID5. Like I said it all works fine.

However, I bought a Highpoint PCI-X RAID controller, stuck it into the
system and cabled it to an external SATA enclosure, and Grub breaks. I
reboot, the BIOS sees the new controller, the controller sees the new
drives I've attached, and then I see 'Loading Grub' and then 'Loading
Grub state 1.5' comes up and that's where it stops. Just completely
sits there and does NOTHING.

I discovered that if I kill the power to the external enclosure,
everything boots normally. My BIOS sees the controller, the controller
sees that there are *no* drives attached to it, and Grub boots off the
RAID1 without issue and loads my system off the RAID5.

Anyone have any idea why in the hell Grub would hang when the external
drives are present?

* All RAID above is "md" or "software" RAID

--

-- 
Douglas J Hunley (doug.hunley <at> gmail.com)
Twitter:  <at> hunleyd                                               Web:
douglasjhunley.com
G+: http://goo.gl/sajR3

initramfs 'pro' needed

I recently started booting via initrams (thanks to the udev 'no
separate /usr' shit) and it works fine. However, I have a new issue
that requires me to recompile nouveau as a module (it's currently
compiled-in to the kernel as I don't use modules if I can avoid it). I
can easily enough flip the bits in the kernel compile to make it a
module, that's no biggie. However, I'm not sure what I need to do to
my initramfs to get the module included. ;)

I'm using an init.cfg (attached) to have the kernel build the
initramfs and pull in all the binaries that are needed. How do I tweak
this to pull in the appropriate modules?

Thanks!

--

-- 
Douglas J Hunley (doug.hunley <at> gmail.com)
Twitter:  <at> hunleyd                                               Web:
douglasjhunley.com
G+: http://goo.gl/sajR3

I recently started booting via initrams (thanks to the udev 'no
separate /usr' shit) and it works fine. However, I have a new issue
that requires me to recompile nouveau as a module (it's currently
compiled-in to the kernel as I don't use modules if I can avoid it). I
can easily enough flip the bits in the kernel compile to make it a
module, that's no biggie. However, I'm not sure what I need to do to
my initramfs to get the module included. ;)

Re: unexpected grub breakage

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 6:16 AM, Doug Hunley <doug.hunley <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I realize there is a *lot* of redundancy in that subject ;)
>
> I'm running Grub legacy (1.x) and it worked perfectly until yesterday.
> For the longest time now, I've had four WD SATA drives in my
> workstation. They are split into a 100Mb RAID1 and a RAID5 taking up
> all the rest of the space. Grub's /boot partition is on the RAID1,
> while / is on the RAID5. Like I said it all works fine.
>
> However, I bought a Highpoint PCI-X RAID controller, stuck it into the
> system and cabled it to an external SATA enclosure, and Grub breaks. I
> reboot, the BIOS sees the new controller, the controller sees the new
> drives I've attached, and then I see 'Loading Grub' and then 'Loading
> Grub state 1.5' comes up and that's where it stops. Just completely
> sits there and does NOTHING.
>
> I discovered that if I kill the power to the external enclosure,
> everything boots normally. My BIOS sees the controller, the controller
> sees that there are *no* drives attached to it, and Grub boots off the
> RAID1 without issue and loads my system off the RAID5.
>
> Anyone have any idea why in the hell Grub would hang when the external
> drives are present?
>
> * All RAID above is "md" or "software" RAID

Just so that I'm clear, you're saying that you're *adding* new drives
with this Highpoint RAID controller, and you're *not* moving the
pre-existing drives to the Highpoint RAID controller?  If so, how
large are these new disks, and are they really new blank disks, or

Re: unexpected grub breakage

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 10:22, Lonni J Friedman <netllama <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> Just so that I'm clear, you're saying that you're *adding* new drives
> with this Highpoint RAID controller, and you're *not* moving the
> pre-existing drives to the Highpoint RAID controller?

Correct

>  If so, how
> large are these new disks, and are they really new blank disks, or
> were they previously used for some other purpose, and potentially have
> old, unknown mystery data on them?

they are 500Gb each, they were used elsewhere, not sure what's on them
though i believe it's an lvm container (or whatever the word is, I
dont have lvm on this box)

>
> What does your grub configuration file look like (grub.conf, menu.lst
> or wtf your distro uses to configure grub)?

cat /boot/grub/grub.conf:
default 0
timeout 10

splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/tux.xpm.gz

title=Linux (3.3.2-gentoo)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-3.3.2-gentoo quiet fastboot root=/dev/md127

Re: unexpected grub breakage

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 10:34 AM, Doug Hunley <doug.hunley <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 10:22, Lonni J Friedman <netllama <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>> Just so that I'm clear, you're saying that you're *adding* new drives
>> with this Highpoint RAID controller, and you're *not* moving the
>> pre-existing drives to the Highpoint RAID controller?
>
> Correct
>
>>  If so, how
>> large are these new disks, and are they really new blank disks, or
>> were they previously used for some other purpose, and potentially have
>> old, unknown mystery data on them?
>
> they are 500Gb each, they were used elsewhere, not sure what's on them
> though i believe it's an lvm container (or whatever the word is, I
> dont have lvm on this box)

i'd suggest that you overwrite zeros on the  first and last 1MB of
each disk.  this can easily be done with dd, something like (adjust
the of to whatever your actual disks are):
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb count=1 bs=1M skip=$(( $(blockdev --getsz
/dev/sdb) - 1024 ))
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb count=1 bs=1M

it might even be sufficient to just manually delete any partitions on
the disks, although that may not be any faster than just using dd to
nullify them.

i've seen cases where old disks with wacky storage/partitioning and/or
bootloader setups got picked up when GRUB scanned all the disks (yes,

Re: unexpected grub breakage

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 14:10, Lonni J Friedman <netllama <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Where in the SBIOS boot order is the new RAID controller, and where
>>> are the pre-existing disks?
>>
>> dead last cuz that's where i put it to be ;)
>
> that was a two part question.  you answered one part (and its not
> clear which part).

the new controller came up as first boot device when I first put it
in. I subsequently moved it to the last boot device. the other disks
are boot devices 1-4.

is that better?

--

-- 
Douglas J Hunley (doug.hunley <at> gmail.com)
Twitter:  <at> hunleyd                                               Web:
douglasjhunley.com
G+: http://goo.gl/sajR3
_______________________________________________
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Re: unexpected grub breakage

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 1:07 PM, Doug Hunley <doug.hunley <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 14:10, Lonni J Friedman <netllama <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Where in the SBIOS boot order is the new RAID controller, and where
>>>> are the pre-existing disks?
>>>
>>> dead last cuz that's where i put it to be ;)
>>
>> that was a two part question.  you answered one part (and its not
>> clear which part).
>
> the new controller came up as first boot device when I first put it
> in. I subsequently moved it to the last boot device. the other disks
> are boot devices 1-4.
>
> is that better?

sure, thanks.  what about my 'dd' suggestion in the previous email?

--

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                                    netllama <at> gmail.com
LlamaLand                       https://netllama.linux-sxs.org
_______________________________________________
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Re: initramfs 'pro' needed

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 08:25, Doug Hunley <doug.hunley <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> I recently started booting via initrams (thanks to the udev 'no
> separate /usr' shit) and it works fine. However, I have a new issue
> that requires me to recompile nouveau as a module (it's currently
> compiled-in to the kernel as I don't use modules if I can avoid it). I
> can easily enough flip the bits in the kernel compile to make it a
> module, that's no biggie. However, I'm not sure what I need to do to
> my initramfs to get the module included. ;)

Q:  your distro?  Debian and derivatives (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) have all
in /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf and with modules in the modules
file.

>
> I'm using an init.cfg (attached) to have the kernel build the

?? kernel doesn't build initrd.img, that's the job of update-initramfs
or similar script run during kernel upgrades (or on a whim from cli).

> initramfs and pull in all the binaries that are needed. How do I tweak
> this to pull in the appropriate modules?

Not sure -- doesn't look like anything in Deb distros.   Have you
looked in /etc/ for some kind of initramfs directory.  Must have a
configuration besides this (or what you have is not very
extensible/flexible).  Almost reminds me of Slackware.

>
> Thanks!
>

Re: unexpected grub breakage

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 08:16, Doug Hunley <doug.hunley <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I realize there is a *lot* of redundancy in that subject ;)
>
> I'm running Grub legacy (1.x) and it worked perfectly until yesterday.
> For the longest time now, I've had four WD SATA drives in my
> workstation. They are split into a 100Mb RAID1 and a RAID5 taking up
> all the rest of the space. Grub's /boot partition is on the RAID1,
> while / is on the RAID5. Like I said it all works fine.

nice to hear GRUB _finally_ works on RAID (or does it? -- I think only
in case of GRUB2).  I still rip it out and use LILO.  Wait till you
see the new improve GRUB OS.  Includes firmware files and is bigger
than DOS 6.2 was.

>
> However, I bought a Highpoint PCI-X RAID controller, stuck it into the
> system and cabled it to an external SATA enclosure, and Grub breaks. I
> reboot, the BIOS sees the new controller, the controller sees the new
> drives I've attached, and then I see 'Loading Grub' and then 'Loading
> Grub state 1.5' comes up and that's where it stops. Just completely
> sits there and does NOTHING.

Yes.  You absolutely need to start using UUID identification.  Your
new drive became sda, and the old sda is not sdb.  Not important once
you change.  Easily done in LILO.  Can't help you w/ GRUB.

>
> I discovered that if I kill the power to the external enclosure,
> everything boots normally. My BIOS sees the controller, the controller
> sees that there are *no* drives attached to it, and Grub boots off the