grub doesn't boot with efi and md raid root

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Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

The patch provided by Dick Porter worked for me as well (with /boot being a separate md array than /). Thanks!

I've encountered this issue as well running 12.04.3 with a 5-device RAID 6 array using grub + EFI + Secure Boot.

I worked around it by manually creating a grub.cfg file on the EFI partition that just changes the root to the correct /boot md partition and then reloads the actual /boot/grub.cfg file.

Details here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2190716&p=12861263#post12861263

Dear all,
please can you tell us if you can reproduce the bug with 13.10 ?

Sorry, the machine in question is a server that needs to remain on LTS

Hi, I have very a similar issue. Reproducable with 13.10 as well.

I also found this bug. I installed 12.04.3 LTS Server using md raid1 for root partition on x86-64 box using EFI boot. The Ubuntu installer (alternate_amd.iso) sets up partitions /boot/efi and / and swap.

I also found grub installs its EFI app correctly, and it launches at boot. However, grub can't find the root partition.

I found a different answer on how to patch around this from: http://askubuntu.com/questions/355727/how-to-install-ubuntu-server-with-uefi-and-raid1-lvm. Manually edit /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg and substitute the correct UUID for the sw raid for the bad UUID in this file. The system will now reboot, but I haven't tested booting from a HW off.

What I'm concerned about is "how does this work?" The bootloader GRUB2 is reading /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg from the /boot/efi FAT32 UEFI partition and executes a command "search_fs_uuid uuid root" which finds the uuid for the RAID1 md device. But how does GRUB2 know about sw raid devices? The / filesystem is on a RAID1. GRUB2 needs to load /boot/grub/grub.cfg and run it.

My hypothesis is GRUB2 goes to the md superblock and finds the uuids for the devices in the raid, goes to one of those, and since it is mirrored (RAID1), can fetch from /boot/grub. Is that right?

Perhaps this bug is easily fixed by the installer making the UEFI FAT32 partition be at /boot instead of /boot/efi. In that case, /boot/grub/grub.cfg will be in the UEFI partition and GRUB2 will always know how to access it even if / is RAID5.

Can anyone confirm this line of thinking?

Grub understands linux software raid. The only thing that needs to be on the EFI system partition is the grub image itself. This seems to just be a bug in grub-mkconfig that causes it to put the wrong uuid in the cfg.

That makes sense. It is consistent with all the reports I've seen describing this defect. My patched system reboots fine after HW off.

I also used instructions from here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/355727/how-to-install-ubuntu-server-with-uefi-and-raid1-lvm

cp /usr/sbin/grub-install /usr/sbin/grub-install.backup
patch /usr/sbin/grub-install patch
umount /boot/efi
mount /dev/sda1 /boot/efi
grub-install /dev/sda1
umount /boot/efi
mount /dev/sdb1 /boot/efi
grub-install /dev/sdb1
reboot

Hi! I have the same problem: install everything and boot in EFI mode, then I see "error: efidisk read error" and I get grub> prompt. I found a fix not mentioned here: after the install, boot from a LiveCD, install boot-repair and in its options unselect "SecureBoot" option. [I don't know what's wrong with the SecureBoot, but I won't investigate it further. Also, I don't know if the new grubx64.efi file the boot-repair writes to the EFI partition boots in SecureBoot or not.] Proceed with the commands it offers (when it asks about buggy-kernel, say No) and reboot. More details here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2201239.

I confirm that the patch proposed by Dick Porter executed as Thomas C. explains also fixes my problem, though the "efidisk read error" flashes for an instant before it starts to boot.

I also tried the solution of creating a grub.cfg file in the EFI partition (proposed by Andy Sayler) and it didn't work, though Andy had a slightly different setup: /boot and / on the same RAID array. I tried some obvious tweaks but with no luck.

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

I am experiencing these same symptoms while trying to install Ubuntu 18.04 in UEFI mode with a 4-disk RAID10 as root on my R410. ESP gets mounted at /boot/efi, kernel/ramdisk get installed to /boot, and the ESP's grub.cfg points to another grub.cfg that is only accessable after the array is assembled. The result on boot is Grub CLI that isn't able to identify any partitions (ie 'ls (hd0)' results in an unknown filesystem error). Will try above soon and report back.

[Expired for grub2 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Hi all!

I'm sorry, but how can this patch (#12) be done?

I've get grub> console, after that i did:

set root=(lvm/datavg/datalv)
linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-200-generic root=/dev/datavg/datalv
initrd /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-200-generic
boot