Arch Linux

Evgeniuz

Member

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 7

[Solved] Fake raid system won't boot after upgrade to 3.1.9-2

I have fake (nvidia) raid 1 setup using dmraid. All worked pretty well for almost a month and every update went fine. Except the last one to linux 3.1.9-2. There was some output lines from pacman saying something like "hook dmraid is not available" during linux package installation. And after I rebooted computer neither main kernel nor fallback kernels won't boot saying "Unable to determine major/minor of root devices" and dropping into recovery shell. I don't know what to do now, how to restore system and why this is happened?

Last edited by Evgeniuz (2012-01-18 19:04:09)

Strike0

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2011-09-05

Posts: 1,429

Re: [Solved] Fake raid system won't boot after upgrade to 3.1.9-2

Now that's a bad error indeed. I don't think anyone can tell you why it happened, without knowing your exact disk setup and, particulary, the nvidia raid chipset. What has happened sounds clear: your kernel has not been updated with appropriate modules to access the fake-raid. So when you rebooted

Anyway: Maybe there is another, simpler, way but what you can do now is:
1) Get your arch install disk (or the official current one) and boot with it
2) load dmraid modules manually and see if you can access your boot drive (i would not touch the data drive or try to activate the "/" raid yet and assume your boot is not in a raid)
3) Read the wiki's about chroot,  fakeraid install and grub recovery
4) Make sure you understand the concept of it.
5) Come back here with questions you have about it as well as details about your grub kernel line (parameters in the menu.lst) disk layout and information about that raid controller.

The basic idea for you to restore it would be to boot, activate and check the raid, chroot into the system, (do a backup) and install the last working kernel before (which still will be in your pacman cache).

Evgeniuz

Member

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 7

Re: [Solved] Fake raid system won't boot after upgrade to 3.1.9-2

So, I found solution to this problem. Recently I deleted all packages but the base, and dmraid package has been deleted. But system worked, because kernel image contained it inside. And after rebuilding it stopped working, because dmraid wasn't present.
I booted from installation media, as you suggested, chrooted into system (article was very helpful), installed dmraid, rebuilt image with mkinitcpio -p linux and everything worked. Thanks for tips!

Last edited by Evgeniuz (2012-01-18 11:46:45)

Strike0

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2011-09-05

Posts: 1,429

Re: [Solved] Fake raid system won't boot after upgrade to 3.1.9-2

Ok, great you got it recovered swiftly! Put a [Solved] into the header of your first post sometime, easier for others to get an overview when searching here then.