Alexander V. Makartsev wrote on 1/25/26 1:05 PM:
I suspect your MD RAID1 was probably setup is a non-standard way, somehow,
so grub gets confused during system startup, or during "grub-install".
I found my notes from when I first installed Linux software RAID on the
machine in question (in 2013), and, without going into details, it basically
was simply done as a RAID1 installation from what was at the time the official
debian installer. I had to do it a couple of times to get the partitioning on
the two drives right. Both of the drives in that original installation were
2TB. My memory about the partitioning was correct: the two original drives
each had two partitions: i) 16GB, which was used as swap on one drive, and
merely formatted as ext3, but unused, on the other; then the rest of each
drive was the RAID mirror.
A few years later, one of the drives started to generate SMART errors, so it
was replaced. Although both the original drives were 2TB, I had to use a 3TB
drive as a replacement, because when I tried to use a replacement 2TB drive,
something complained in the process that there was insufficient space --
presumably because of disk-to-disk variation in usable space. That replacement
3TB drive is the one that I am now trying to make boot. My notes don't say
that I ever tried to make that drive bootable, which was an obvious error on
my part, and why I am now in this situation. (I probably knew it had to be
done, and didn't have time, and then forgot all about it.)
My first guess is that you are using that non-RAID disk which somehow
still contains MD array metadata on it. Maybe all this time we were
recovering wrong disk? Is it possible that sda and sdb devices were mixed
up during boot time?
Nope, definitely not. I am very careful, each time I boot, to make sure which
disk is which, because I am aware that the mapping between device name and
physical drive can and does change, and one needs to be very, very careful
when issuing commands that they are going to affect the correct disk.
The current non-RAID disk from which I have been booting was burned a few days
ago, especially for this task.
I'm really grasping at straws. So my first suggestion
is to make a bootable USB thumb drive with Live system on it, to exclude
possible interference with other disks.
OK, I will do that as soon as I get a chance, and post the output you request.
It won't be today (Sunday here). I may or may not get to it tomorrow -- I
already have a lot scheduled for the day and I also feel the need for a
breather from all this. But as soon as I can, I'll get back here with the info.
Doc
--
Web: http://enginehousebooks.com/drevans
