[Bug 40993] Ubuntu 6.06 beta installation problem (dual IDE controller or raid related?)

[Gisli Ottarsson]

Public bug reported:

Affects: linux-source-2.6.15 (Ubuntu)
       Severity: Normal
       Priority: (none set)
         Status: Confirmed


Description:

I am having a curious problem installing Ubuntu 6.06 beta on my system.  This system has previously run Ubuntu 5.08 but I thought I would try a clean install.

After a successful installation, I am unable to log in because the
system claims to be unable to mount the root filesystem on /dev/sda1.  A
novice inspection suggests that the reason for this may be that the
order of disks has changed between installation and first boot.  Let me
add a little bit more detail:

My machine has four 120Gb IDE hard drives attached, in pairs, to two
separate IDE controllers.  Each of the disks has one large partition
which I intend to set up in a 1+0 configuration.  This does not seem to
be possible during installation and I was going to tend to this later.
These partitions were not mentioned during the installation and I don't
think this is an issue.  Each disk also has a swap partition
(/dev/sd[abcd]2) and a 8.5 Gb partition (/dev/sd[abcd]1).  One of these
/dev/sda1 was to serve as my / partition and the other three (/dev/sdb1,
/dev/sdc1 and /dev/sdd1) were set up as a RAID5 to hold /usr.  None of
this seemed to be an issue during the installation.  Both contain the
Reiser filesystem.

At first boot, it seems as if the order of the two IDE controllers has
been switched.  The system is unable to mount /dev/sda1 and when I use
the busybox shell (which I am dumped into following the failed
installation) to look at /dev/mdstat, it seems that /dev/sda1 is one of
the partitions that the system now believes is involved in the RAID5.  I
can manually mount /dev/md0, but /dev/sda1 is claimed to be busy.  On a
lark I tried to mount /dev/sdc1 and it seems to hold the contents of /

Unfortunately I do not know how to dig deeper by myself, but I would be
honored to assist in the resolution of this matter.

Best regards

  Gisli

PS:  Please note that /dev/md0 existed from previously running Ubuntu.
It was not created by 6.06.  I was somewhat surprised not to see it
directly in the partitioner but I selected the option to define a RAID
but immediately finished and then the RAID was found.  I then asked to
have it formatted and mounted as /usr.  No complaints.

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Ubuntu 6.06 beta installation problem (dual IDE controller or raid related?)
https://launchpad.net/bugs/40993