So I've been having some trouble getting my setup to work. I've tried various different things that I've found (some of them listed below) but I still can't get the OS to load; screen just comes up black and the monitor goes to sleep with a 'no input detected' message.
Some of the things I've tried/looked at to do this:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopi...=90878#p522997
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=119832
Here's what my setup looks like:
- Computer is an HP Z400 with 16gb RAM
- 4 - 500gb HDDs all partitioned the same
Partitions:
- sd[abcd]: 1mb free space at front of drive
- sd[abcd]1: 1mb unformatted => flagged as ‘bios_grub’
- sd[abcd]2: 4096mb Swap => Raid1 on md3, formatted as Swap
- sd[abcd]3: 122880mb unformatted => Raid10 on md0, formatted as EXT4 (root partition)
- sd[abcd]4: 500mb unformatted => Raid 1 on md2, formatted as EXT4 (/boot partition)
- sd[abcd]5: (rest of the drive) unformatted => Raid6 on md1, formatted as EXT4 (mounted to: /home/Data)
- sd[abcd]: 1mb free space at end of drive
Here are the steps I took to get to where I am:
1) Installed hard drives and wiped completely before starting (no errors detected)
2) Booted into Mint 14.1 x64 Live CD
3) Used Gparted to create GPT partition table and partitions as listed above. Flag the ‘bios_grub’ portion and flag the drives to be raided as ‘raid’
4) Installed mdadm and created partitions as listed above
Code:
sudo apt-get install mdadm
sudo mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=10 –c 512 --layout=f2 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sd[abcd]3
sudo mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=6 –c 512 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sd[abc]5
sudo mdadm --create /dev/md2 --level=1 –c 512 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sd[abc]4
sudo mdadm --create /dev/md3 --level=10 –c 512 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sd[abc]2
5) Format md3 as Swap and md0-2 as EXT4
Code:
sudo su
mke2fs -t ext4 -E stride=128,stripe_width=512 /dev/md0
mke2fs -t ext4 /dev/md1
mke2fs -t ext4 /dev/md2
mkswap /dev/md3
6) Ran Mint install and selected 'Do something else' for hard-drive partitioning
7) In the partitioner, I selected md0 as my Root [/] partition, gave md1 a mount point of /home/Data, and marked the Swap partition on each hard drive (sda, sdb, sdc, sdd) as 'do not use' [the logic of this being that it would use the Raided Swap partition (md3)].
8) Install completed as normal and Grub failed to install (as expected).
Code:
When you receive an error that installer cannot install bootloader to the disks choose OK,
and on the next window called "Bootloader install failed" the OK button isn't active!
Do move forward you have to:
a) click first position "Choose a different device to install the bootloader on:"
b) open the list with disks and choose something, for example /dev/sda
OK button is now active!
c) click "Continue without a bootloader"
d) click OK
9) Open up terminal and get in as root
10) Mount the raided partitions so I can Chroot to finish raid setup and install Grub
Code:
mkdir /mnt/temp
mount /dev/md0 /mnt/temp
mount /dev/md2 /mnt/temp/boot
mount /dev/md1 /mnt/temp/home/Data
mount --bind /dev /mnt/temp/dev
mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/temp/dev/pts
mount --bind /proc /mnt/temp/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/temp/sys
mount --bind /tmp /mnt/temp/tmp
chroot /mnt/temp
11) Install mdadm on new root. When reconfiguring mdadm, select the option to allows boot from a degraded array.
Code:
cp /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/tail /etc/resolv.conf
apt-get update
apt-get install -y mdadm
dpkg-reconfigure mdadm
Note: You may get an error connecting to the package server because the /etc/resolv.conf file gets emptied of its DNS servers at some point in the installation process. You can either rebuild that with something from your ISP, or use the ‘cp’ command above to copy it from elsewhere.
12) Install grub (This didn't work apparently, but this is what I did)
Code:
update-initramfs -uv
update-grub
grub-install --recheck --debug /dev/sda
grub-install --recheck --debug /dev/sdb
grub-install --recheck --debug /dev/sdc
grub-install --recheck --debug /dev/sdd
13) Create symbolic link to md0 from /dev/root
Code:
ln -s /dev/md0 /dev/root
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
14) Unmount new install
Code:
exit
umount /mnt/temp/dev
umount /mnt/temp/dev/pts
umount /mnt/temp/proc
umount /mnt/temp/sys
umount /mnt/temp/tmp
*Note: unmounting /mnt/tmp/dev failed saying files were still in use. I’ve started using umount –l on that mount instead
15) Wait for Raid to sync:
Code:
echo 200000 > /proc/sys/dev/raid/speed_limit_min
watch -n1 cat /proc/mdstat
16) Reboot
At this point the computer did not boot into Mint or Grub or, well anything really and just sat there with a black screen after getting past the bios before the monitors shut off saying no input detected.
Some of the things I noticed in doing this:
After the initial install, when booting back into the Live CD you have to re-install mdadm in order for the Live CD to be able to work with the Raid partitions. To get the CD to see them, run:
Code:
sudo apt-get install mdadm
sudo mdadm --assemble --scan
For whatever reason though, when doing this only md0, md1, and md2 are identified. Md3 is nowhere to be seen, however if you look at /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf of the newly installed Mint, md3 is listed.
I'm fairly certain that the root of the problem is that the Grub still isn't installed properly.
So, does anyone have any other suggestions or advice?
cypher
