Bug 569098 - Installer won't find existing RAID1 installation
Summary: Installer won't find existing RAID1 installation
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: anaconda
Version: 12
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Hans de Goede
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2010-02-28 04:06 UTC by quiet.dragon
Modified: 2010-03-12 15:37 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2010-03-12 15:15:45 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
Collected log files (10.39 KB, application/zip)
2010-03-04 03:39 UTC, quiet.dragon
no flags Details
Collected log files with singleton RAID1 sets (12.53 KB, application/zip)
2010-03-06 16:17 UTC, quiet.dragon
no flags Details

Description quiet.dragon 2010-02-28 04:06:52 UTC
Description of problem:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=241373


I'm trying to upgrade from Fedora 10.

I have a RAID1 system with the following partitions in the stated order:

   1. a multiboot grub RAID1 partition
   2. a RAID1 system partition
   3. a swap partition
   4. a RAID1 data partition (with /home, etc).


This used to be a Fedora 6 system, and I've upgraded to Fedora 7, then Fedora 8, Fedora 9, and then to Fedora 10 using the DVD installation image booting from a USB stick with no problem. The Fedora 10 installer detected my existing installation in the 2nd partition, and went to work.

Then I tried going straight to Fedora 12 from Fedora 10. In this case Anaconda thinks this is a pristine system and is hell bent on a clean install.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:

See above.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. See above
2.
3.
  
Actual results:

Installer offers s clean install.

Expected results:

Installer offers an upgrade.

Additional info:

The problem is that the Fedora 12 installer (unlike the previous ones) does not start the RAID1 arrays prior to scanning for live systems. The RAID1 partitions have type 0xfd.

At the Welcome to Fedora splash screen (either in text mode or GUI mode), use the ALT-CTRL-Fn or ALT-Fn sequence to get a shell. I mounted the system partition as ext3 readonly and copied out /etc/mdadm.conf to /etc/. I then started the RAID1 system and data arrays manually (eg mdadm -A /dev/md1).

Then switch back to the splash screen and continue the installation. With the RAID arrays running, the installer can find the existing installation and offers the upgrade screen.

Comment 1 Hans de Goede 2010-03-03 10:39:47 UTC
Hi,

Can you please try again, get as far as you can without problems, and then switch to tty2 (CTRL + ALT + F2), and collect all the log files under /tmp and attach them here ?

(you can use for example scp to get the log files out of the installer environment).

Thanks,

Hans

Comment 2 quiet.dragon 2010-03-03 18:01:35 UTC
Hmm ... I've already managed to perform the upgrade as per the additional
comment I posted on:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=241373


> The problem is that the Fedora 12 installer (unlike the previous ones) does not > start the RAID1 arrays prior to scanning for live systems. The RAID1 partitions > have type 0xfd.
>
> At the Welcome to Fedora splash screen (either in text mode or GUI mode),
> use the ALT-CTRL-Fn or ALT-Fn sequence to get a shell. I mounted the
> system partition as ext3 readonly and copied out /etc/mdadm.conf to /etc/.
> I then started the RAID1 system and data arrays manually (eg mdadm -A /dev/md1).
>
> Then switch back to the splash screen and continue the installation. With the
> RAID arrays running, the installer can find the existing installation and
> offers the upgrade screen.


Hopefully the installer will not see the upgraded system since it doesn't
enable the RAID1 disks so I'll be able to reproduce the problem for you.

Comment 3 quiet.dragon 2010-03-04 03:39:45 UTC
Created attachment 397711 [details]
Collected log files

Attached are the requested log files. These were collected immediately following the "Detecting storage devices" (or similar) screen and while the installer was waiting for the hostname to be entered.

Comment 4 Hans de Goede 2010-03-04 07:56:50 UTC
Ok, so here is what anaconda sees on your system:

/dev/sda1 mdraid partition
/dev/sda2 mdraid partition
/dev/sda3 swap partition
/dev/sda4 mdraid partition

/dev/sdb1 EFI vfat partition

Are you using raid1 sets in degraded mode (iow mirrors with only one disk present) ?

Comment 5 quiet.dragon 2010-03-04 17:18:53 UTC
(In reply to comment #4)
> Ok, so here is what anaconda sees on your system:
> 
> /dev/sda1 mdraid partition
> /dev/sda2 mdraid partition
> /dev/sda3 swap partition
> /dev/sda4 mdraid partition
> 
> /dev/sdb1 EFI vfat partition
> 
> Are you using raid1 sets in degraded mode (iow mirrors with only one disk
> present) ?    

Yes. When doing an upgrade, I split the RAID1 pair for backup purposes. This way I have a fall back position should the upgrade fail.

As I explained in the description, this strategy worked well for my upgrade to FC10 and I was extremely surprised to have such difficulty getting from FC10->FC11 or FC10->FC12.

Comment 6 Hans de Goede 2010-03-05 07:20:23 UTC
Hi,

Our official policy is that doing installs / upgrade on degraded raid sets is not
supported. This has always been the case, if upgrades on degraded raid happened to work in the past that was mostly luck.

So I'm going to close this bug as notabug. If you would like to see this changed, please file a new bug with as summary:

"RFE: Allow use of pre-existing mdraid sets in degraded mode"

Thanks,

Hans

Comment 7 quiet.dragon 2010-03-06 16:17:46 UTC
Created attachment 398224 [details]
Collected log files with singleton RAID1 sets

I decided to try another approach.

Rather than run a degraded RAID1 set, I re-configured the RAID1 sets to be singletons:

Personalities : [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10] [linear] 
md3 : active raid1 sda4[0]
      265666816 blocks [1/1] [U]
      
md0 : active raid1 sda1[0]
      8385792 blocks [1/1] [U]
      
md1 : active raid1 sda2[0]
      39061952 blocks [1/1] [U]
      
unused devices: <none>


Thus these are no longer degraded RAID1 sets.

I've re-opened this defect because the FC12 installer would not
recognise this non-degraded configuration.

Comment 8 David Lehman 2010-03-09 17:03:03 UTC
It recognized your singleton arrays just fine. It's just that we can't upgrade from Fedora 12 to Fedora 12. From the logs:

  INFO: product Fedora version 12 found on md1 is not upgradable


It would be great if you'd post your solution to the forums, BTW.

Comment 9 quiet.dragon 2010-03-09 18:29:33 UTC
(In reply to comment #8)
> It recognized your singleton arrays just fine. It's just that we can't upgrade
> from Fedora 12 to Fedora 12. From the logs:
> 
>   INFO: product Fedora version 12 found on md1 is not upgradable

ROTFL

I'll try an FC12 -> FC13 upgrade to verify that it indeed does make an effort to begin the upgrade before posting this workaround.

It will be a couple of days before I have time to verify this.

Comment 10 quiet.dragon 2010-03-12 15:15:45 UTC
(In reply to comment #9)
> It will be a couple of days before I have time to verify this.    

Ok, I've verified that the FC13-alpha installer will see a RAID1 singleton and offer me an option to upgrade.

Comment 11 quiet.dragon 2010-03-12 15:37:34 UTC
(In reply to comment #10)
> Ok, I've verified that the FC13-alpha installer will see a RAID1 singleton and
> offer me an option to upgrade.    

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1340496#post1340496


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.