[Bug 29858] Re: root on lvm fails to boot.

[Henning Eggers]

I marked bug 255477 as a duplicate of this. I anyone disagrees, please
change it back.

This bug has been hanging around for a long time and for those who get
bitten by it it means server down time at console level (which is always
a pain) and the need to repair the system with an alternate boot media.
Here is what happened to me and how I fixed it:

1. Installed a fresh Ubuntu 10.04.1 (i386) through the network because the box has no optical drive and the BIOS is too old for USB booting. I install it with an LVM root.
2. A few weeks later I install updates (apt-get update; apt-get upgrade) which pull in a new kernel. I admit, I did not watch the update closely.
3. As requested by the update, I eventually reboot.
4. The box remains as silent as a brick on the network.
5. I pull it out, attach a console, boot it and see the "ALERT! /dev/mapper/...-root does not exist." and drop to a shell in the initrd.
6. In the initrd I see no sign of lvm tools. I also don't see the /boot partition but that's besides the point, I think.
7. I reboot and go to the grub menu - I don't have an old kernel to chose from !!!
8. I start the installation (through the network) again and enter rescue mode.
9. Eventually I end up on the rescue shell with my root partition mounted.
10. Dpkg-query tells me that lvm2 is not installed. What?
11. I apt-get install lvm2 which automatically runs update-initramfs ... That looks promising.
12. I reboot and all is well! Woohoo!
13. The box goes back into its corner, headless.

I described this in so much detail to make it clear that this little bug
means a lot of work for somebody running an Ubuntu server and is a big
annoyance. I don't think something like this should happen and something
needs to be figured out. It is not a bug in initramfs-tools AFAICT but
more in the dependencies as somebody on bug 255477 already mentioned.
Can somebody please add the right project or package that this needs to
be fixed in, then mark the bug invalid for initramfs-tools?

I will set this bug to critical in Ubuntu because I think it really is
and also to maybe draw some attention to it. Whoever downgrades it
should please be so kind to explain why it is not. Thank you. ;-)

-- 
root on lvm fails to boot.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/29858
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