Bug#475585: grub-probe: error: Unknown kind of RAID device `/dev/md/1'

[Hadmut Danisch]

Robert Millan wrote:
>
>
> It appears the /dev/md/%d form wasn't taken into account.  Will go through this
> eventually;  in the meantime, you can just enable /dev/md%d symlinks as descrbed
> in mdadm(8) manpage.
>
>   
Well, yeah, I tried this by replacing the symlink /dev/md1 with the block
device entry, which solved the problem. To get this effect permanently, I
modified the udev configuration, but then I decided to not go this way
since
it required modification of important udev files and would break debian
upgrades.
And yes, if /dev/md%d is a block device and not a symlink, that error
message
is gone.

However, I still had too much trouble with getting grub2 running. So I
finally
went back to grub 0.97, which simply worked as expected.

The two major problems I had with the grub2 (grub-pc) packages:

- The documentation and the error messages are poor. It was not obvious
what
needs to be done or why commands failed. E.g. when it complains about a
device,
it is not always obvious whether a linux device (/dev/...) or a grub
device (hd0) was
expected. The manpages just list options without telling details.

- Installation of grub2 failed in the first try. I then was not able to
install grub2 from
  a LiveCD. In such cases I usually use a debian or ubuntu livecd, mount
the disk's
  root , boot, tmp, var filesystems, add /proc and /sys, do a chroot,
and then I am
  able to repair. E.g. grub 0.97 can then easily be used to reinstall
the boot blocks.

  In contrast, grub2 did not work with this method, and it's error
messages were
  everything but useful. I did not find a way to rescue a linux machine
with broken
  grub boot sectors.

  I then reinstalled the grub 0.97 debian packages, used grub as usual
to setup (hd0),
  and everything was fine immediately.



So grub2 is still highly experimental and not recommendable for
productive environments
in my eyes.

regards
Hadmut