Created attachment 667631 [details] screen shot of boot failure Description of problem: Anaconda allows /boot on any RAID 0, 1, 4, 5, 6, with any number of disks, even though GRUB2 currently doesn't allow certain combinations. The result, if trigged, is an OS that installs without error, but does not boot. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Fedora-18-TC3-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso + anaconda-18.37.7-1 How reproducible: Probably always but needs regression. Steps to Reproduce: 1. 5 virtual disks, Manual Partitioning 2. RAID6 3. Root only (no swap, no boot, totally unified; obviously by definition this is presently NOT a blocker because criterion says exception for /boot, however the UI allows me to do this) 4. Proceed with installation, results in a bootable system. 5. add a 6th disk with mdadm, and grow the RAID to 6 virtual disks; reboot; still a bootable OS 6. add a 7th disk with madam, and grow the RAID to 7 virtual disks; reboot; fails. Actual results: Failure at 7 member disks in RAID 6. Expected results: Do not allow user to configure unbootable configurations; or at least warn the user the configuration is unbootable. Additional info: Needs regression. Criteria don't require /boot on any RAID. This is RAID 6 but at the moment I have every reason to suspect this will fail at 7 member disks for RAID 0, 1, 5.
How do you justify filing this as an installer bug when the problem is that grub2 apparently has arbitrary limitations on the number of member disks in a raid set?
(In reply to comment #1) The justification is that the installer shouldn't produce an unbootable system, certainly not without warning, and for which there's no clear work around. Whatever the GRUB limits are, whether they're arbitrary, subjective or objective, should be taken into account by the installer. Regression reveals that 7 or more disks in md RAID 0, 4, 5, 6 all fail to boot. And that 5 or more disks with Btrfs data profile raid0 or raid10 fail to boot. I haven't tested dmraid or LVM. Perhaps the thing to find out is whether the GRUB limitation is stable or if there are plans to change them.
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