grub-install defaults to partition on whole disk raid array rather than underlying disk or whole raid array

Bug #1327133 reported by Salih EMIN
16
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
grub-installer
New
Undecided
Unassigned
grub-installer (Ubuntu)
Won't Fix
Critical
Unassigned

Bug Description

How to reproduce:

1) Boot Ubuntu 14.04 64bit live
2) Open "disks"
3) Select 2 Hard drives and create a RAID 1 (mine had 2x 3TB SATA)
4) Once finished open Ubuntu installer
6) Click next and select the default settings (Erase everithing and install Ubuntu)
7) Once installation finshes in reports: grub-install /dev/md127p2 failed and propts you to select other partition. Which evere you select, the system will report that the installation is completed but once you reboot you will get boot disk failure, as if there is no Grub installation

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: ubiquity 2.18.7
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-24.46-generic 3.13.9
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CasperVersion: 1.340
Date: Fri Jun 6 12:38:12 2014
InstallCmdLine: file=/cdrom/multiboot/ubuntu-14.04-desktop-amd64/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper cdrom-detect/try-usb=true noprompt floppy.allowed_drive_mask=0 ignore_uuid live-media-path=/multiboot/ubuntu-14.04-desktop-amd64/casper/ initrd=/multiboot/ubuntu-14.04-desktop-amd64/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash --
LiveMediaBuild: It
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: grub-installer
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

Revision history for this message
Salih EMIN (salih-emin) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Phillip Susi (psusi) wrote :

According to your logs the subsequent attempts reported failure as well. This is because of a known bug in ubiquity that causes all subsequent attempts to fail after the first one has. Please try again and select the correct drive the first time, which would need to be your actual boot disk, i.e. /dev/sda.

Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Salih EMIN (salih-emin) wrote :

Thanks @psusi for your comment. The problem is that when selecting the default settings as I described there is no option of sellecting /dev/sda.
What should have happend when a user selects default (Erase everithing and install Ubuntu) grub-install should detect RAID aray and install it aproprietlly. Instead what happens is, as I described grub fails with grub-install /dev/md127p2 failed and propmts you to select other partition where ther is NO /dev/sda as option only : /dev/md127, /dev/md127p1, /dev/md127p2, /dev/md127p3.

Revision history for this message
Salih EMIN (salih-emin) wrote :

Inspecting more on the matter (mostly googling and readyn tuts) I see there are some issues with Grub and RAID. With a quick search here there is a Bug #752694 seems related with mine. Should I mark mine as duplicate of Bug #752694 ?

Revision history for this message
Phillip Susi (psusi) wrote :

No, this is unrelated to that old report that was invalid anyhow. I was able to reproduce this with mdadm --create -e 1.0 -n 2 -l 1 /dev/md0 /dev/sda /dev/sdb, then going through the install, it tried to install to a partition on the array. Interestingly, when I omit the -e 1.0, it tries to install to /dev/sda, as it should, but this fails since the default 1.2 metadata format does not leave room for grub.

Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Critical
status: Incomplete → Triaged
summary: - RAID1 installation of grub: grub-install /dev/md127p2 failed
+ grub-install defaults to partition on whole disk raid array rather than
+ underlying disk or whole raid array
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
milestone: none → ubuntu-14.04.1
Revision history for this message
Alexander Paunovsky (apaunovski) wrote :

I have this problem too, except that I am trying to install on an actual hardware RAID.

Mathew Hodson (mhodson)
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
milestone: ubuntu-14.04.1 → none
Paulo (paulo847)
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Incomplete
aldric (arauk)
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → aldric (arauk)
Phillip Susi (psusi)
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Triaged
assignee: aldric (arauk) → nobody
Changed in grub-installer:
assignee: nobody → md ibrahim iqbal (ibrahimah)
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → md ibrahim iqbal (ibrahimah)
Phillip Susi (psusi)
Changed in grub-installer:
assignee: md ibrahim iqbal (ibrahimah) → nobody
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
assignee: md ibrahim iqbal (ibrahimah) → nobody
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → Nguyen Xuan Tien (nxtien99)
Phillip Susi (psusi)
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
assignee: Nguyen Xuan Tien (nxtien99) → nobody
ziya (bazzkpr1)
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
assignee: nobody → ziya (bazzkpr1)
status: Triaged → Fix Committed
Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
status: Fix Committed → Fix Released
Revision history for this message
Phillip Susi (psusi) wrote :

Please don't randomly mess with the bug status.

Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
assignee: ziya (bazzkpr1) → nobody
status: Fix Released → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Salih EMIN (salih-emin) wrote :

Firstly, people if you don't intend to commit yourself on fixing it don't mess with the status. If you change the status, please add a link to the commit/patch that fixed the issue.

Secondly.... it's been 4 years !!! What is going on with this bug ? Are you just waiting to the EOL of Ubuntu 14.04 so it will be an obsolete bug report ?

Revision history for this message
vvorldx (vvorldx) wrote :

got issues while installing 19.04 ubuntu .unble to install grub2 .

Revision history for this message
Steve Langasek (vorlon) wrote :

Closing this bug 'wontfix'. Full-disk software RAID is incompatible with UEFI which almost all amd64 systems include nowadays. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, while still supported, is not undergoing any further development work, only security fixes; and no further install media will be issued. I do not know if this bug is fixed in later releases of Ubuntu, but ubiquity which embeds grub-installer is also not undergoing further active development, we are in the process of replacing it with a frontend to subiquity. But subiquity will also not want you to use full-disk RAID, again because it's incompatible with UEFI.

Changed in grub-installer (Ubuntu):
status: Triaged → Won't Fix
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