Install of Ubuntu 8.10 server unbootable (a measure of progress)

[Mark Kirkwood]

Mark Kirkwood wrote:
>
> No, it didn't, but seeing what was happening with more verbose boot 
> messages (i.e removing quiet), prompted me to be much more aggressive 
> with the rootdelay kernel line option (rootdelay=300) - so my command 
> line looks like:
>
> $ cat /proc/cmdline
> root=/dev/mapper/pdc_bcfcjihecj3 ro vga=791 rootdelay=300
>
> Now, that was too high, but allowed a boot without any problems. So we 
> are sorted (for hardware raid anyway). I might go back and try software 
> raid now I have more idea what the problem was!
>
>
>   
Attempting software raid again, unfortunately no joy at all - firmly 
refuses to boot. I think I am running into a variant of these initramfs 
bugs:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/initramfs-tools/+bug/83231
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mdadm/+bug/103177

However none of the work-arounds suggested there work (sleep in 
initramfs-tools/init and adding break=mount), so I guess need to raise a 
new bug. FWIW the previous Linux installation did not use ramfs in the 
boot process, as I was able to customize the kernel before installing it 
(under the circumstances, quite a nice option).

regards

Mark

P.s: for those folks wondering why I don't just use the firmware raid , 
one reason - performance. The previous Linux was able to crank out 220 
MB/s from 4 ATA disks... whereas the firmware raid struggles to get to 
100 MB/s even after fooling with blockdev to set readahead etc.