Hello Martin<br><br>Please find here the report of what I did about this issue. In one word, my installation was missing the mdadm package...<br><br>I compared both initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686 and initrd.img-2.6.30-2-686. I used cpio -t < initrd.img-2.6.[26-30]-2-686 > content[26-30], sorted each content file, edited both file to remove 2.6.26 or 2.6.30 and compared it using diffuse...<br>
<br>I found quite a few differences in the modules loaded... Concentrating only on the module related to md, I modified the /etc/initramfs-tools/modules to include all the modules present in initrd.img-2.6.26-2-686 and NOT present in initrd.img-2.6.30-2-686<br>
<br>/etc/initramfs-tools/modules now reads<br><br># List of modules that you want to include in your initramfs.<br>#<br># Syntax: module_name [args ...]<br>#<br># You must run update-initramfs(8) to effect this change.<br>
#<br># Examples:<br>#<br>raid0<br>raid10<br>raid456<br>multipath<br>raid1<br>md-mod<br>linear<br><br>I created a new initrd.img-2.6.30-2-686 by running # update-initramfs -c -k 2.6.30-2-686.. Same problem... <br><br>Time to compare more in detail...<br>
<br>I also noted some other differences that related to the use of my raid devices. My initrd.img-2.6.30-2-686 is missing<br>conf/conf.d/md<br>sbin/mdadm<br>script/local-top/mdadm<br>unrelated to my problem because I do not use it, I also noted that script/local-top/lvm was missing too<br>
<br>Time to think now... Where is that sbin/mdadm coming from... <br>The command # find / -name mdadm finds NOTHING... <br>Synaptic shows that mdadm is NOT INSTALLED... <br>I do have a raid 5 for /home and a mirror for / and the swap.. but I have no mdadm??? <br>
<br>I reinstalled my system in octobre using the official DVD for stable, using the non expert mode with questions and answer, the only exception being that I did NOT let the installation initialize and format my /home on a raid5. <br>
After the installation I modified synaptic to use the test. I am the only one to use this machine and the only time I go into root is when I run synaptic to follow the evolution of the test Debian... I do not recall that I ever played with mdadm since the installation... (Was it ever installed???, was it removed by synaptic at some stage)? I am sure that I never tried to remove it as I have plenty of space on my disks...<br>
<br>All that is VERY VERY STRANGE :-) (Computer is no magic... Most of the time)<br><br>I installed mdadm via synaptic, restored /etc/initramfs-tools/modules, ran update-initramfs -c -k 2.6.30-2-686 that gave me an error message (Known issue I think)<br>
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.30-2-686<br>W: mdadm: You appear to be missing /dev/md/2 from /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf !<br>W: mdadm: If this array is required to boot, you must add the following line:<br>W: mdadm: ARRAY /dev/md/2 UUID=2e58b3c7:72f2231e:f25f8b76:ced30a76<br>
<br>I ran zcat initrd.img-2.6.30-2-686 | cpio -t | grep md and found all needed modules and quite a few expected files:<br>lib/udev/rules.d/64-md-raid.rules<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/ide/amd74xx.ko<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/ide/cmd64x.ko<br>
lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/ide/cmd640.ko<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/md<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/md/linear.ko<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/md/raid0.ko<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/md/raid10.ko<br>
lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/md/raid456.ko<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/md/multipath.ko<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/md/raid1.ko<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/md/raid6_pq.ko<br>
lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/md/md-mod.ko<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/char/agp/amd-k7-agp.ko<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/char/agp/amd64-agp.ko<br>lib/modules/2.6.30-2-686/kernel/drivers/video/console/mdacon.ko<br>
35415 blocs<br>etc/mdadm<br>etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf<br>conf/conf.d/md<br>scripts/local-top/mdadm<br>sbin/mdadm<br><br>I tried to boot... the boot process now goes past the point I was blocked at, but stops further...The last message ( I recorded on a paper and typed it here by hand) is<br>
[21.588641] sd 0:0:2:0: [sdc] attached SCSI disk<br>I did not touch the machine for 60 seconds at my watch, then issued Cont-alt-del and got something like (only 2 sec before the screen vanishes)<br>stopping all md disks followed by a list with md0 md1 md2<br>
<br>I guess I have hit another bug here... If and when I have more time, I will maybe have a deeper look :-)... There is a bug report (#549287) that seems to imply udev or mdadm... How do I go about removing a package and reinstall an old one... (Some more reading in perspective, unless I find a cook book about that on google...) :-)<br>
<br>Anyway, thanks for your attention. I guess you can close this bug or learn from it that one should make sure to verify if mdadm is present before to try the kernel update on a raid disk.<br><br>Regards.<br><br> Louis Richard <br>