mdadm Boot Error, incrementally starting raid array Ubuntu SErver 14.04
Solution 1
Had this as well. In my environment: 2x SAS HDDs configured as raid10.
The problem was that mpt2sas.ko
was not loaded, and thus mdadm
couldn't see any disk. This in turn was caused by a packaging error: when apt was removing unneeded wlan packages like crda, it also auto-removed the linux-image-extra-$VERSION
package, which actually owns mpt2sas.ko
.
To ensure, that the module gets loaded before the raid modules, I also did a
echo mpt2sas >>/etc/initramfs-tools/modules
Solution 2
On my machine (Ubuntu trusty) this was caused by having a newer (xenial 4.4.0 -series) kernel installed under /boot and being used by default.
I solved this issue by booting an older kernel version and then running:
update-initramfs -u
update-grub
Solution 3
finally "fixed" the error. Short Version: The Transcend SSD (TS128GSSD25S-M) in combination with the ASRock B85M Pro4 Mainboard caused the Error. After Cloneing the System with clonezilla to a Samsung 840 Evo i booted now 30 times without problems.
in deep Problem report: But why is mdadm showing up with totaly unrelated raid Array Problems? : Well while creating the Raid Array (or maybe by default? i dont know exactly) mdadm put's a raid initialization script into the initramfs. This scrip check if the rootfs is mounted, if the rootfs (on my SSD) isn't mounted it jumps to function mountroot_fail
message "Incrementally starting RAID arrays..."
if mdadm --incremental --run --scan; then
message "Incrementally started RAID arrays."
return 0
This leads to the confusing output. After Removing those scripts from initramfs i bumped into the real Problem:
Gave up wiating for root device. Common problems:
- Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
- check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
- check root= (did the system wait for the right device?)
missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/01234567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcdef does not exist. Dropping to a shell! BusyBox v1.13.3 (Ubuntu 1:1.13.3-1ubuntu11) built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands. (initramfs)
As the error isn't persistent i thought to give a different SSD a try, and BAM working.
Solution 4
For me the solution were missing "dm-mod", "dm-snapshot" and "dm-mirror" entries in /etc/initramfs-tools/modules. I took me quite some time to fight this issue as the error messages were talking about "mdadm" and raid - so how should one guess that lvm is the issue.
My setup:
sda -> sda1 (0xfd linux raid autodetect, 500MB), sda2 (0xfd linux raid autodetect, 250G)
same for sdb
sda1 + sdb1 --> /dev/md0 (mdadm) "/boot"
sda2 + sdb2 --> /dev/md1 (mdadm) --> lvm volume for "swap" and "/"
I didn't put "/boot" into the LVM to avoid hazzle with grub/lvm in the first place. But it looks like I just have fallen into another tarpit of grub/lvm/raid :(
I guess the issue was that grub properly mounted the initramfs and then it couldn't mount /
(because of missing lvm modules) it tried to initialize some raid devices.
The incrementally starting raid arrays
is somewhat misleading as it can be any missing module which inhibits /
from getting mounted. Also see above post about missing mpt2sas
module.
Additionally I tought the dm_
modules were not necessary as they are for dmraid - which is wrong: They are also necessary for LVM. In my situation I did a switch from dmraid back to the good ol' mdadm because dmraid (fakeraid) caused problems (A directory just disappeared).
And last but not least I wondered that I can add dm-mod
, dm-snapshot and
dm-mirrorto
/etc/modulesand
/etc/initramfs-tools/modulesaltough there are not really and
.ko` files by that name. Must be some kind of module aliases.
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user279118
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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user279118 almost 2 years
i build a small Server with Ubuntu 14.04 for Samba, I has one SSD Drive (the ubuntu installation is on it) and 2 3TB SATA Disk, the sata disk are combined to a Raid 1 with mdadm.
Now sometimes (no everytime, i think it's maybe related to a dirty shutdown) the system hangs at the boot process:
incrementally starting raid arrays mdadm: Create user root not found mdadm: create group disk not found incrementally started raid arrays
these 4 lines keep repeating. It's really strange cause the boot volume (the ssd) isn't configured as raid and this should not affect it?
Important edit: if i press ctrl + alt + del , the server reboots and starts up normaly, if i look at the raid dev
mdadm --detail /dev/md0
after the boot, everything looks good.I'm not a linux pro and didn't find anything on the internet related to these errors, so now i'M a littel stuck, maybe somebody has a clue what the problem could be or some advanced troubleshooting advises (log files etc)?
thanks for reading regards Stefan
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Mitar over 9 yearsI had the same problem and after searching I found out that this solution worked for me. I just had to rename all
/dev/md/*
devices to/dev/md*
devices in/etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
and runupdate-initramfs -u
to update the initramfs.
-
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dannyman about 9 yearsThis, along with Mitar's comment, above, about renaming
/dev/md/*