https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=398356 Summary: Booting from Software-RAID fails Product: openSUSE 11.0 Version: RC 1 Platform: x86-64 OS/Version: openSUSE 11.0 Status: NEW Severity: Normal Priority: P5 - None Component: Installation AssignedTo: bnc-team-screening@forge.provo.novell.com ReportedBy: mail@steffen-moser.de QAContact: jsrain@novell.com Found By: Beta-Customer YaST2 allows using a software RAID device (mdX) as a root partition when installing openSUSE-11.0-RC1 (without having a separate non-software-RAID partition for "/boot"). After then, the installed system is not bootable (tested with software RAID level 1). As far as I know, GRUB is not able to boot from MD devices in general. LILO, on the other hand, is able to boot from MD devices. So in my opinion, it would make sense to keep the permission of having "/" (or even a separate RAIDed "/boot") on a software RAID device, but also to inform the user that he would get an unbootable system. When selecting LILO as a boot loader in YaST2, it terminates with an error when having "/" (or the separate "/boot") on an MD device. I suppose that this is related to the problem described in [1]. So up to now, the only thing a user can do to allow booting from an MD device is to make an MD partition in RAID version 0.90 manually - as described in [1] and using LILO then. I understand that booting from RAID devices is not necessary, there are other solutions, to have a fail-tolerant system - e.g. generating separate non-RAID "/boot" partitions on both disks. But if "/" on RAID or "/" and "/boot" on RAID functions, it would make things like kernel updates easier. The advanced user is able to configure it by hand easily. But I think the not so advanced user should be warned that the partitioning he created will lead to an unbootable system as long as he doesn't think of some additional things manually (at the moment: using LILO instead of GRUB and setting up a RAID superblock in version 0.90 for the boot device). I personally would not disallow doing it such a "boot from RAID configuration", but warn the user (or, even better - if time permits, fix YaST2 in a way that it chooses a working solution automatically). [1] http://anti.teamidiot.de/nei/2006/10/softraid_lilo/ -- Configure bugmail: https://bugzilla.novell.com/userprefs.cgi?tab=email ------- You are receiving this mail because: ------- You are on the CC list for the bug.