Hello,
I'm writing to report that my GRUB2 (2.02 and 2.04) seems to have issues to
correctly read the single ext4 and XFS file systems with ~8 TB of size on an 8
TB hard drive.
It incorrectly shows some empty directories.
Details:
* Server: HP DL120 G7, 32 GB RAM hosted by Leaseweb
* Hard drives: 2x TOSHIBA MG05ACA8, firmware GX2A
* Partitioning scheme:
* GPT partitions -> mdadm RAID1 -> LVM -> ext4
* 1 MB BIOS boot partitions (sda1,sdb1), the RAID1 is over (sda2,sdb2)
* mdadm metadata 1.2 (the current default)
Full script that shows how I'm partitioning the server:
https://gist.github.com/nh2/1d2c533085b514dc1a7719f6ff35640b/5592b11209777ee57ff1d96fb1341af10c2eddce
Observed the problem via 2 installation methods: This script, and the dedicated
hoster Leaseweb's automatic reinstallation procedure of Ubuntu 18.04.
The former sets up a `(lvm/vg0-root0)`, and the latter `(md/root)`.
The problem manifests in `ls /boot` being empty even though I had checked it
being not empty when mounted before rebooting from the installer:
grub rescue> ls /
./ ../ lost+found/ opt/ dev/ bin/ run/ root/ var/ vmlinuz.old lib64/ boot/
sys/
srv/ etc/ vmlinuz initrd.img.old usr/ lib/ sbin/ swapfile media/ home/
initrd.im
g tmp/ proc/ mnt/
Good, `/` shows correct contents; `ls (md/root)/` shows the same. `ls /etc`
also shows correct contents.
But:
grub rescue> ls /boot
Empty! This is incorrect.
For a test, I also ran
touch /mnt/testfile
mkdir /mnt/testdir
touch /mnt/testdir/testfile2
from Linux.
In GRUB2, `ls /` showed both `testfile` and `testdir`, but `ls /testdir/`
showed no contents (`testfile2` was missing).
I also tried with xfs instead of ext4, in which case GRUB2 emits:
error: not a correct XFS inode.
error: not a correct XFS inode.
error: not a correct XFS inode.
error: not a correct XFS inode.
error: not a correct XFS inode.
error: not a correct XFS inode.
error: not a correct XFS inode.
error: not a correct XFS inode.
error: file `/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found.
Entering rescue mode...
grub rescue>
When I do not make an 8 TB ext4/xfs file system, but use a small ext2 /boot
partition, then GRUB2 works fine.
What is going on here?
Should GRUB2 be able to read from a single 8 TB ext4/xfs file system? Is this a
bug?
Insights would be very appreciated.
Thank you,
Niklas
