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Jasper
Asked: 2010-10-19 00:04:18 +0800 CST

software RAID array not starting in initramfs on Debian

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One of my Debian servers (kernel 2.6.30-AMD64) refuses to start the software RAID array that houses the root partition in initramfs. It dumps me with a busybox console. When I follow the necessary steps to continue booting it works fine (start the array with mdadm -A and then have LVM scan the volumes with pvscan and then vgchange -ay).

I've tried starting with boot options rootdelay=10 to no avail.

Also I've updated the initramfs and unpacked it to inspect whether it really tries to assemble the raid array (it does).

Output before dumping to console :

mount: mounting none on /dev failed: No such device
W: devtmpfs not available, falling back to tpmfs for /dev

and then some lvm messages saying it can't find the volumes holding the root partitions.

Does anybody have a clue how I could fix this?

debian raid boot mdadm initramfs

3 Answers

  1. You may need to create /etc/mdadm.conf and possibly rebuild initramfs. Check this answer for details.

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  2. For starting server by hand, please try:

    (initramfs) mdadm /dev/md0 -A /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1
[...]
(initramfs) mdadm /dev/md1 -A /dev/sda2 /dev/sdb2
[...]
(initramfs) mdadm /dev/md2 -A /dev/sda3 /dev/sdb3
[...]

    and so on, all of your md partitions.

    If you have LVM, go on with:

    (initramfs) vgchange -ay
  3 logical volume(s) in volume group "pve" now active

    then simply type:

    (initramfs) exit

    and if all is fine, your system will boot.

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  3. I have similar problem, with duplicate name on mdadm.conf

    I fix on the following way, thanks to user130370 solution. [initramfs]mdadm --examine --scan > /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf [initramfs]mdadm -q --assemble --scan --run [initramfs]exit

    rebot automatically

    from the system as first

    #update-initramfs -u

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