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Old 07-17-2014, 11:58 AM   #1
Sumerman
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Registered: Dec 2003
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btrfs preventing installation of grub2


Yesterday I was installing btrfs when I gave the fatal command to format a partition but forgot the partition number! So the drive was wiped and the functioning RAID devices (a RAID1 and a RAID5) were decommissioned. I used sgdisk to duplicate the partition structure from a mated disk and got everything working again.

I went to install grub2 from a chroot into the newly formatted and set up disk and received the following unpleasant news:
Quote:
(chroot) anuday linux # grub2-install /dev/sde
Installing for i386-pc platform.
grub2-install: warning: Attempting to install GRUB to a disk with multiple partition labels. This is not supported yet..
grub2-install: error: filesystem `btrfs' doesn't support blocklists.
This was odd, because I installed grub2 before I wiped the disk when it was similarly set up. I consulted the great guru Google, and found that someone else had the same experience after reformatting a btrfs drive and found that there were crumbs left over from the previous formatting. He got rid of those and voila! Grub installed.

So I checked for my own crumbs. A standard command yielded the following:
Quote:
(chroot) anuday linux # btrfs filesystem show
Label: none uuid: 500fceed-d724-4661-bcab-0e666b1ed414
Total devices 2 FS bytes used 6.89GiB
devid 1 size 20.42GiB used 8.03GiB path /dev/sdb2
devid 2 size 20.42GiB used 8.03GiB path /dev/sde2

Label: none uuid: b1d9ba96-64b5-45e6-87a2-56f51c8a68dd
Total devices 4 FS bytes used 130.75GiB
devid 1 size 232.89GiB used 44.38GiB path /dev/sda
devid 2 size 232.89GiB used 44.38GiB path /dev/sdc
devid 3 size 232.89GiB used 44.38GiB path /dev/sdb1
devid 4 size 232.89GiB used 44.38GiB path /dev/sde1
All good, and as it should be. But then I used the command used by the person in the forum I consulted and got the following:
Quote:
(chroot) anuday linux # btrfs fi show --all
Label: none uuid: df3b59ab-a1ac-4b9c-b551-e17fbab435b7
Total devices 1 FS bytes used 112.00KiB
devid 1 size 1.82TiB used 2.04GiB path /dev/sde

Label: none uuid: b1d9ba96-64b5-45e6-87a2-56f51c8a68dd
Total devices 4 FS bytes used 130.75GiB
devid 1 size 232.89GiB used 44.38GiB path /dev/sda
devid 2 size 232.89GiB used 44.38GiB path /dev/sdc
devid 3 size 232.89GiB used 44.38GiB path /dev/sdb1
devid 4 size 232.89GiB used 44.38GiB path /dev/sde1

Label: none uuid: 500fceed-d724-4661-bcab-0e666b1ed414
Total devices 2 FS bytes used 6.89GiB
devid 1 size 20.42GiB used 8.03GiB path /dev/sdb2
devid 2 size 20.42GiB used 8.03GiB path /dev/sde2
Omigod! It listed not only the expected btrfs arrays but also the UUID that resulted from the accidental reformatting of the entire drive! This, I am guessing, is the culprit crumb.

Does anyone know how to zap this tragic reminder of yesterday's errant keystroke (or lack thereof)? Can I erase this UUID without having to once more reformat the drive and copy all the files? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Last edited by Sumerman; 07-17-2014 at 12:09 PM. Reason: change title to something more informative
 
Old 07-17-2014, 02:45 PM   #2
jefro
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I'm not sure I get the issue. Before you get too much farther let me point out some of my questions.

One is this. "Attempting to install GRUB to a disk with multiple partition labels." Exactly which drive are you trying to install grub on?

Also I don't think you can edit uuid on btrfs yet.
 
Old 07-18-2014, 07:02 AM   #3
Sumerman
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Registered: Dec 2003
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I was installing on /dev/sde (see first line of first quote). Thanks jefro for getting back on this, but I needed to get my computer back up ASAP, and so I'm reformatting and reinstalling once more. Fortunately, everything was backed up. What I'm learning about btrfs is that it is a very sticky filesystem. Once you've made a btrfs RAID, its presence lingers, even after deletion. But btrfs and its capabilities fascinates me, and I'm determined to get this up and running. Thanks, again.
 
Old 07-18-2014, 12:58 PM   #4
Sumerman
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Registered: Dec 2003
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Something learned

Zeroed out hard drive (/dev/sde) that I was unable to install grub2 on, and then did the same copying of the partition of its mated drive (/dev/sdb) to sde and this time I was able to install grub2 successfully. Not sure what "multiple blocklists" the warning referred to when I installed it yesterday, but zapping the hard drive with zeroes seems to have done the trick.

This isn't really solved as a problem, but it is resolved.

Last edited by Sumerman; 07-18-2014 at 12:59 PM. Reason: add comment about being solved
 
Old 07-18-2014, 03:37 PM   #5
jefro
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Thanks for how you got it working.

I was assuming you wanted to install to sda.
 
  


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