ubuntu-users Digest, Vol 69, Issue 224

[Matthias Brennwald]

On May 19, 2010, at 3:14 AM, ubuntu-users-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:

> Message: 10
> Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 09:13:52 +0800
> From: Christopher Chan <christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk>
> Subject: Re: Installing 10.04 to 2TB disk, does not boot
> To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> Message-ID: <4BF33B50.5000509 at bradbury.edu.hk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> On Tuesday, May 18, 2010 09:01 PM, Dave Howorth wrote:
>> Chan Chung Hang Christopher wrote:
>>> Dave Howorth wrote:
>>>> Chan Chung Hang Christopher wrote:
>>>>>> Then I would just start a fresh install and leave everything to the
>>>>>> installer and hope it knows what it's doing! :)  (unless there are known
>>>>>> problems) Just my 2p.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> There are. See previous posts.
>>>> Would you mind pointing out the specific message?
>>> 
>>> The OP used the alternate installer because he wanted RAID
>> 
>> Right, but Matthias is not using RAID for this attempt.
> 
> Well, we don't know that. He has five 2TB disks if I remember correctly 
> and he did not give us the information of everything this time round.

Ultimately, the system was supposed to be running from a software RAID using 5 2TB disks (4 active, 1 spare). However, as I was unable to make this work I thought I'd try with one single disk first to see if the issue is related to the RAID or not. The problem obviously also occurs with only one single non-RAID disk.

>> So I'm still not understanding what the problem is for a non-RAID lucid
>> install where the grub_bios partition has been created?
>> 
> 
> It is down to this: Does the installer, whether the Ubuntu installer on 
> the LiveCD or the debian installer on the alternate cd, know how to 
> ensure a working installation of grub2 on a gpt partition based disk 
> when the computer does not use EFI firmware but BIOS firmware.

Yes. Please also take a look at this thread, which seems to be related:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1480504

Apart from that, I gave up for the moment. I need to bring this machine up and running. I therefore decided to install /boot and the boot loader to a smaller disk. The rest will go to a RAID5 with four 2TB disks (3 active, 1 spare). I think (hope, pray,...) that this will work...

Matthias