booting from RAID 1 in OpenSUSE

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=619566, and HIER

As a workaround, assuming of course that you are using dmraid, use mdraid instead.

In other words, turn OFF the raid in the bios and configure your install with linux software raid.

Problems booting from RAID 1 (Forum)

A few pointers ....

1. The boot partition is under /boot ... it may be accesses through a normal shell (as root user of course). The primary grub configuration stuff is in /boot/grub/menu.lst. Disk boot order is in /boot/menu/device.map. If you change the device.map manually, you must run "mkinitrd".

2. When you configure grub through the graphical interface, make sure the "install to mbr" option is enabled. This can be done manually also, but the graphical tool is easier to use.

3. It is possible that the kernel drivers needed for raid did not get built into the initrd. I had this problem with SuSE 11.2/raid10. My fix was to boot the install system, manually mount the broken installation, add "raid10" to /etc/sysconfig/kernel, and rebuild the initrd with the mkinitrd command. 

-----------------------------------------------

siggx is using mdraid (linux softRAID), not dmraid (fakeRAID)!

I configure the RAID in the installer as MD0 ( / ), MD1 ( /opt ), MD2 ( /home) and MD3 ( swap ) - all are RAID 1. I left the grub install as default. Running fdisk shows both disks of MD0 are bootable and grub shows they have both have stage 1 installed.
This is the error I get on trying to boot:
Booting 'Desktop -- openSUSE 11.3 - 2.6.34-12'
Kernel (hd0,5)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34-12-desktop root=/dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-8badba2:f8edcf33:550ede86 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-5d09bda9:25c8c4e5:05fadba3:44438bf2 splash=silent quiet showopts vga=0x31a
Error 22: No such partition.

I have a /boot directory (RAID 1). on startup, it drops me into the grub prompt. From there, I can boot by using this set of commands:
1. root (hd0,0)
2. kernel /boot/grub/vmlinuz
3. initrd /boot/initrd
4. boot
Here's the menu.lst contents (only essential bits)
timeout 8
default 0
That looks okay... But when I examine the /etc/sysconfig/bootloader, I find this line which, I think, is causing the grief:
DEFAULT_APPEND=" resume=/dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-ed9928fc:5df194bc:7b0ddf72:bc7723a6 splash=silent quiet showops"
When I examine the RAID the uuid don't match. Could this be where it's going wrong?
Anyone any idea what this SHOULD read?

The problem is that the grub menu has the wrong boot disk id (hd0,5). This doesn't exist and it should be (hd0,0). I need to find a way to rewrite the line - I just need to figure out how to access the /boot directory on the raid...
 --------------------

DEFAULT_APPEND=" resume=

That would be the UUID of your swap device. If you can't determine the UUID, replace the right-hand-side of resume= with the /dev/md device which represents your swap. 

------------------------

Error 22: No such partition.
This looks like grub isn't finding /dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-etc.... 

 I don't speak grub, but I don't know how it would get access to /dev/disk/by-id so early in the process. I would open a bugreport.

---------------------------------------

Upgrade vom nicht mehr unterstützten openSUSE 11.2 via zypper dup auf openSUSE 11.4 über SSH hochgehoben habe.

Geplant war eigentlich auf openSUSE 11.3 zu aktualisieren. mkinitrd hat das (Fake) RAID-System unterhalb von /dev bzw. udev nicht gefunden und daher gemeckert. Dem verantwortlichen Perl-Bootloader von openSUSE 11.3 habe ich kein Vertrauen geschenkt und habe daher kurzfristig direkt weiter auf openSUSE 11.4 upgegradet (wohl gemerkt in der gleichen Sitzung ). Soweit sind keine Komplikationen aufgetreten, was an und für sich ziemlich gut ist. Ein Nebeneffekt hat das Upgraden doch. Der Server ist performanter, wobei man es auf den aktuellen Kernel 2.6.37.6-0.5-default zurückführen kann. Alle andere Server-Software habe ich via Repo aktuell gehalten und kann es von dieser Seite ausschließen.