Btrfs vs LVM+DM-RAID

Hi all,
this is my first post, so hello everyone!
I was wondering recently for my new setup, which must contain both RAID0 and RAID1 (mirrored) partitions, which one is better for that... I was using LVM and MD-RAID until now, everything worked OK. Nice feature in btrfs seems to be online FS resize (eg. no umount), which annoyed me with LVM.
Actually, why did they put RAID features in a filesystem in the first place with the btrfs, when it is already available and working on millions of production installations of Linux around the world with the existing software (LVM and Linux soft RAID md), proven stable over the years?
So what do you guys think, is btrfs stable enough right now (I noticed they did finally complete a fsck utility for that FS), and what is advantage of btrfs subvolumes over LVM+MD?
Thanks,
Davor

Evanlec wrote:I played around with BTRFS using its raid functionality, which made it easy to add/remove devices from the raid, but unfortunately it was just too buggy.
I had to re-install arch twice because of btrfs and I finally said screw it and went back to ext4 + mdadm.
My advice, stick with what you've got for now
But just out of curiousity, how long ago was that you played with it and had major problems, so bad that you had to reinstall? They now do have a fsck utility... I'm asking because kernel people release kernel versions every few days, I'm barely keeping track (compile my own kernel, because I don't want preemption and 100Hz clock on a server), I'm on 3.2.11 now... I regularly do my "pacman -Syu", every few days or whenever I remember to do so. So I bet this FS gets less and less buggy every day  and I wouldn't torture it too much if I were using it (like doing unclean shutdowns, cutting off power, etc)
I did my own research in the meanwhile. I thought I would use it's RAID functionality which is really simple, but where I was wrong in my assumptions was to use it's subvolumes in place of LVM logical volumes... That's not quite the same thing, as although you can mount a btrfs subvolume on a different mount point, such as for example /var/log, but you cannot limit it's size and resize it later when needed like LVM. That's what I think at least, I created filesystems on files instead of real block devices while playing with it (loop device) so I wouldn't screw something up, and I couldn't in any way create a subvolume of specified size or resize it. Maybe I didn't do my reading/researching very well, though...
So is it possible to create a btrfs subvolume of a set size and resize later or at least mount it with a size limit? If not LVM will stay always on my systems as this is not a replacement for it, and for RAID, why would one use btrfs for it when there is already MD?
I'm asking about a future here when btrfs will be mature, if someone is knowledgeable of plans for this FS, why would one use it for RAID and volume management instead of existing software (LVM2, mdadm) that works very well, and did so for many years?
Thanks.

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    http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=12FH8S1B

    WonderWoofy wrote:If you vgchange -ay when it drops you into the initramfs shell, can you then exit out and continue the boot?
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    Last edited by dafrizz (2013-11-07 06:45:09)

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    I use LVM so that I can span my home partition from my Samsung to my Mushkin.  This is super convenient. I tried btrfs, and it was great, the features were awesome and everything.  But putting the drives into a raid array actually resulted in a very similar speed to the Samsung on its own.  I think this is because a RAID array is limited by the slowest drive in the array.  I could have done LVM in a striped array as well, but chose to just let it span in a JBOD fashion.
    Ultimately, the way you set your partitions up is going to be your choice.  I will also say that if you have never gone through the process of determining the right layout for you, you will definiteyl not get it right the first time.  You may get a usable setup, but if you are a tinkerer at heart, you will likely not be totlaly satisfied with your setup.  This is another reason why I use LVM.  I can set my partitions up to be super small, and then expand them as necessary.  This is a good reason to use something withonline resizing.  I personally choose ext4, but there are others that would fit this bill. 
    If you end up using btrfs, you should not use LVM.  I think I read somewhere (which I cannot find now) that says there is a performance hit with btrfs and LVM, and also all the features of LVM are provided by btrfs natively.  I did like the idea that with btrfs, you simply create subdirectories, and don't have to worry about partition sizing.  They jsut expand as needed.  But because of this, is is very hard to get an accurate read of how much disk space is being used.  Also, the native btrfs snapshot feature is awesome.  I get teh same thing with LVM, but it jus seemed so much better implemented with btrfs.
    One more thing, I tried using lzo compression with btrfs on my Samsung, since it does not rely on compression (like Sandforce controllers).  This worked out well, but I saw my battery time go way down.  In fact, I saw higher levels of power consumption without the compression.  I cannot say precisely what it is caused by, but I suspect that it might have been the real time checksumming (this is pure speculation!).
    So all in all, if it were me and I didn't have to worry about battery life, I would use a single btrfs partition (excluding /boot of course) and use the subvolume feature to create "partitions".  Then use "compress=lzo" mount option, and experience the awesomeness.  But sine you are using a laptop, I would recommend using LVM with ext4.  Just be sure to use something that supports TRIM, and either mount with the discard option, or set up an anacron job to issue fstrim to all necessary mount points.
    Oh yeah, and the swap thing.  Use a swap file,  it is much better in its flexability.  You can easily resize or remove it.  Though if you end up using LVM, you can do this pretty easily as well.  If you end up with btrfs, do not use a swap file, as you will likely end up with filesystem corruption. 
    Oh yeah, keep in mind that btrfs does not have a fsck that conforms to the fucntionality held by other fsck utilities.  So if you want your initramfs to fsck your partitions on boot, this is not yet possible with btrfs.  Though with the btrfs snapshot feature, you could implement a snapshotting before updates to roll back if sh*t goes awry.
    Last edited by WonderWoofy (2012-11-13 18:03:22)

  • Pacman complains after Gummiboot upgrade

    Hi,
    just updated to gummiboot 24-1 which replaced gummiboot-efi. After installation pacman complained:
    File system /boot is not a FAT EFI System Partition (ESP) file system.
    Fehler: Befehl konnte nicht korrekt ausgeführt werden (Error: Command not executed)
    I just wonder why gummiboot assumes /boot to be a FAT ESP? I mount my ESP at /boot/efi, because I thought this is common practice. Furthermore which command was not executed? Anyhow system is booting normal, so not a big deal.
    Last edited by tobsen (2013-03-05 19:00:27)

    65kid wrote:
    srs5694 wrote:Imagine, for instance, one distribution setting up gummiboot on the ESP; then another one comes along and its installer decides that the ESP is too crowded, so it sets up gummiboot on a separate Freedesktop partition.
    This is something that I would consider a buggy installer.
    Perhaps -- but the Freedesktop spec creates more room for such bugs to be created than would other alternatives. All other things being equal (which I realize they aren't), it's better to have a spec that gives fewer opportunities for bugs in implementations than a spec that gives more opportunities for such bugs to breed.
    Even if creating a separate ESP was a good idea, how would the installer even do that? It would have to shrink another partition first which is way too risky.
    No, it wouldn't. An OS installer is presumably creating partition(s) for the OS, so that means that either the disk already has free space or an existing partition must be shrunk to make free space to install the OS. The second ESP or Freedesktop partition would just go in that free space. There's no rule that says that either the ESP or the Freedesktop partition must go before other partitions on the disk, although doing so is advisable because putting an ESP in the middle of the disk increases the odds that it will have to be moved in the future. Also, note that one of my points is that having two ESPs on a disk is inadvisable because Windows doesn't like such configurations; thus, I'd say that it's better to create a Freedesktop boot partition than a second ESP.
    srs5694 wrote:Thus, the safest choice -- the one that's most likely to work with the greatest number of computers -- is to put the Linux boot loader (or a boot manager, at least) on the ESP, even if it's small, and put the kernel elsewhere.
    But putting the kernel elsewhere is crazy for a simple reason: what if my root including the kernel is on an encrypted drive, RAID, LVM etc.?
    I said "elsewhere," not "the Linux root (/) partition." In this context, "elsewhere" could easily be a separate Linux /boot partition, which can reside outside of the LVM or RAID, be unencrypted, be FAT, etc.
    That's exactly what gummiboot is about - do only what the boot loader needs to do, let the kernel deal with the rest.
    I would argue that "what the boot loader needs to do" should include "read partitions other than the one from which it was loaded." In the BIOS world, this pretty much goes without saying. In the EFI world, it's easier to create a boot loader that can read only from its own partition, but that will inevitably lead to problems on some systems and configurations.
    And "the greatest number of computers" won't even care if their ESP is only 100MB, because they only use one OS. And whoever needs more should simply make the ESP big enough in the first place.
    By "greatest number of computers" I meant the largest possible number, not the majority. Yes, the majority can probably make do with a 100MiB ESP, but to maximize usability, other configurations are more flexible and therefore preferable.
    WonderWoofy wrote:I don understand why srs5694 includes the filesystem drivers in his rEFInd, but also understand your point about having the boot manager be as simple as possible like gummiboot.
    Clearly there's a typo; I'm not sure if you mean you do understand or that you don't understand. In case it's the latter, it's because (a) they were available with the rEFIt source code and so could be (relatively) easily included with rEFInd; and (b) because including them in rEFInd greatly simplifies installing and using rEFInd on typical Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, and other distributions. These distributions typically either don't use LVM or use a separate ext2/3/4fs /boot partition. It's currently possible to download a Debian package or RPM of rEFInd, install it on one of these distributions, and have it all work without further tweaking, at least in most cases. (If the user uses XFS, JFS, Btrfs, or something else unusual to hold the kernel, this won't work without additional reconfiguration; but the default settings for these distributions put the kernel outside of LVM/RAID setups in ext4fs partitions.) In the end, this is partially labor saving for me, too; users tend to want things to Just Work, and when they don't, they e-mail me for help. Without those drivers, rEFInd does not Just Work on the more popular distributions, but with them, it does, so I spend less time answering e-mail.
    It seems that the filesystem driver is optional and is only available if the necessary drivers are placed on the ESP.
    rEFInd's filesystem drivers are implemented as separate binaries from rEFInd itself, so you can run rEFInd without using the drivers at all. Currently, the install.sh script (which I believe the Arch package omits) attempts to determine what filesystem is used on /boot and installs it, if necessary. If it's not necessary (say, if the filesystem is FAT), no filesystem driver gets installed unless the --alldrivers option is passed to install.sh. It's possible to use rEFInd's filesystem drivers without using rEFInd, but most EFIs lack support for loading filesystem drivers automatically, so the trick is to get them loaded.
    65kid wrote:Modularity may be a good thing, duplicating logic still isn't, even if it's "just" a filesystem driver. The kernel already knows how to do it and it knows how to do it best, why waste effort duplicating the same logic into the bootloader?
    Rudictio ad absurdum: The kernel already knows how to accept keyboard input, so why duplicate that functionality in a boot loader?
    The answer is the same in both cases: Because it's necessary, or at least helpful, before the kernel loads.
    I'm more than happy to admit that it's not necessary for the EFI or a boot loader to read Linux-specific filesystems if the user/installer sets up the computer with the kernel on a FAT filesystem. The problem is that in the real world, that conditional clause is often false. Note my earlier comments about Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. -- they all place their kernels on ext2/3/4 filesystems by default. Even many Arch users today have scripts and whatnot to copy their kernels to the ESP from /boot on some other filesystem. Yes, this becomes simpler if the ESP is mounted at /boot -- but as I've pointed out in this thread, doing this has its drawbacks, too, particularly when the user is a novice who hasn't thought things through or when using software (including third-party OSes) that set things up in a way that's not optimal for this type of configuration. I chose to fork rEFIt to rEFInd in order to glue together all the pieces I saw lying around that could almost handle the real-world situation. Now (as rEFInd) it can.
    65kid wrote:I admit that I don't have a good understanding of how these EFI filesystem drivers work, but wouldn't you have also have to keep the EFI driver up-to-date separately?
    Yes, but read-only filesystem drivers need little maintenance once they're stabilized. All of rEFInd's filesystem drivers are read-only, so they pose no real threats to your data.
    WonderWoofy wrote:As far as updating the driver, I would imagine that this would be inclusive in the rEFInd updates.  But moving the necessary files to the proper places might indeed be manual (rEFInd is not my primary boot manager, so I am not sure if there is automagic function to be included here).
    The install.sh script included with rEFInd will update the driver(s) along with the rEFInd binary and icons. Unfortunately, the Arch packagers have chosen to omit this script from the Arch packages (or they had the last time I checked).
    65kid wrote:I didn't mean to say that these EFI drivers are complete non-sense, whoever thinks this is the better approach or has a special usecase for it has the option and may use it. I personally just don't see the usecase
    Given the relative market shares of Arch vs. Fedora or Arch vs. Ubuntu, it's really the Arch way of doing things that qualifies as the "special usecase." The drivers -- and especially the ext4fs driver -- help a lot with installing rEFInd on these distributions and getting it working painlessly.
    progandy wrote:Simply support kernel on ESP, if Windows cannot deal with more than one ESP that is not our problem to solve. The user will have to resize the partition in this case.
    Philosophically, you're right -- Windows' bugs and limitations belong to Microsoft. Practically, I'm afraid it's not that simple -- if John Doe installs Linux and then tries to re-install Windows and discovers that it flakes out because of something that Linux put on the hard disk, who will John blame? Maybe Microsoft, but maybe Linux. Furthermore, if a Linux developer knows that the Windows bug exists, is the developer justified in ignoring that bug, knowing that doing so will cause John Doe problems in the future? IMHO, the answer is "no" -- although with the caveat that the difficulty of finding a solution is a factor, too.
    As to resizing the ESP, as I wrote in post #12 in this thread, you shouldn't do that unnecessarily, since it will almost certainly require deleting or resizing the first partition that follows the ESP, and in some cases a partition or two after that, as well. Resizing partitions from their start points is inherently dangerous, so any policy that requires doing this will damage somebody's filesystem. This is an even clearer case where developers' decisions can have negative consequences, and developers have a moral obligation to avoid causing such problems (such as data loss), even indirectly.
    I'd just like to take a step back from all this to clarify my main point: The Freedesktop proposed loader spec is a worthwhile attempt to address certain problems with boot loaders as they're currently implemented in Linux. I agree with most of their goals and some of the details of that proposal. If it were implemented universally tomorrow, though, it would cause problems. The main reason is because of gummiboot's limitations, which seem to have motivated many of the proposal's details. (Let me say that I'm not trying to trash gummiboot here; I do respect it, but it also has limitations that have important implications when it's used as the core of a proposal like this one.) Consider:
    An existing installation has Windows and an ESP that's too small. Under the Freedesktop guidelines, a new Freedesktop partition will be created and used to hold kernels. I don't believe the proposal is specific about where the boot loader must reside, but there are two choices: Put gummiboot on the ESP, in which case it can launch Windows but not Linux; or put gummiboot on the Freedesktop boot partition, where it can launch Linux but not Windows. In either case it's not very useful by itself. In the latter case, the EFI might not even launch it, since the Freedesktop partition isn't an ESP, and IIRC, the EFI spec doesn't require the EFI to be able to launch boot programs on a non-ESP.
    Now, consider if gummiboot were modified to support booting from other partitions. The six Freedesktop rules could be cut by two (removing #4 and #6) and slightly amended (to make $BOOT always be a Freedesktop partition and never an ESP, and to permit multiple Freedesktop partitions per disk should the need arise). This will eliminate the problem I've just identified and simplify the rules that OS installers or administrators should follow, thus reducing the odds of bugs or different interpretations causing problems. Yes, it means that the Freedesktop developers will need to add some code to their boot loader. OTOH, this also means there will be:
    Less ambiguity about what /boot is (the ESP vs. the Freedesktop boot partition) on any given system; this will lead to simpler code in support scripts and less chance of user error because of confusion or help from others based on false assumptions
    Less chance of another OS altering or damaging the Linux boot loader files, thus improving overall system reliability
    Less chance of creating a configuration in which gummiboot is incapable of booting some OSes that are legally installed
    A need for fewer rules in the proposal, thereby reducing the odds of differing interpretations causing compatibility problems
    Overall, I'd say these benefits are worth a few extra lines of code.

  • [SOLVED] full disk encryption uefi motherboard queston about /boot

    I a little confused got a new pc and I'll be installing in the uefi manner with lvm on luks and  with the efi system partition having the kernel and initramfs copied over will that completely serve as my boot partition or do i still need an unencrypted /boot?
    Last edited by haVok1701 (2013-05-09 23:53:38)

    re: Using an ESP that's separate from /boot:
    WonderWoofy wrote:The only time this makes sense is if you are using something that can actually read the /boot partition (that is ext{2,3,4}, btrfs, etc.).  I think that all the UEFI bootloaders can do this, and of the boot managers rEFInd can do this as well.
    The capabilities of boot managers and boot loaders are more complex than this:
    The ELILO boot loader relies on the EFI to read the kernel and initrd file. Normally, this means that they must reside on a FAT partition (usually the ESP), although if some other tool has loaded an EFI filesystem driver, that filesystem can be used. The ELILO documentation refers to a capability to read kernels from something other than ELILO's partition, but I've never figured out how to get that to work. (The documentation doesn't say how to specify another partition -- a frustrating omission.)
    Fedora's patched GRUB Legacy boot loader has built-in drivers that enable it to read ext2/3/4fs, ReiserFS, XFS, JFS, and I believe Btrfs, as well as several non-Linux filesystems (I think these include FAT, HFS+, and ISO-9660, but I'm not positive of that). It can't handle LVM, RAID, or encrypted setups, though.
    The GRUB 2 boot loader can read everything that GRUB 2 can, plus LVM and RAID setups. I'm not sure about encryption, offhand.
    The kernel's EFI stub loader relies on the firmware to read its initrd file, and so can read whatever the firmware can read -- just FAT by default, but this can be extended via an EFI driver.
    The gummiboot boot manager relies on the EFI to read the kernel, and gummiboot provides no means to launch drivers. It's also restricted to reading files from the partition from which it was launched. Thus, as a practical matter, gummiboot works only if the kernel is on the ESP, or at least on a FAT partition, or HFS+ on a Mac. (It's possible to rig up a system in which rEFIt or rEFInd launches gummiboot from a non-FAT partition, but that's overly-complex, IMHO.)
    The rEFInd boot manager relies on the EFI to read the kernel. Unlike most other tools, though, rEFInd can launch EFI drivers prior to scanning filesystems. It can also launch kernels from any partition that the EFI can read. rEFInd ships with drivers for ext2/3fs, ext4fs, ReiserFS, HFS+, and ISO-9660, but not for XFS, JFS, or Btrfs. If you find or write another EFI filesystem driver, rEFInd could launch it. AFAIK, there are no EFI drivers for LVM, RAID, or Linux encryption systems. Thus, as a practical matter, rEFInd can launch kernels stored on the most popular Linux filesystems, but not from LVM, RAID, or encrypted partitions.
    The rEFIt boot manager (rEFInd's predecessor) is not ideal for launching Linux kernels directly, although it can be done if you jump through enough hoops. It comes with ext2/3fs and ReiserFS drivers, but not the other drivers that rEFInd supports. (You could use rEFInd's drivers with rEFIt, though.) It can launch a boot loader from any partition that the EFI can read.
    I realize that's a lot of detail to take in, and it makes it impossible to draw broad conclusions about filesystem support of boot loaders vs. boot managers. Instead, though, I'd say that they can be ordered, from most flexible to least flexible, as: GRUB 2, GRUB Legacy, rEFInd, rEFIt, ELILO, and finally gummiboot.

  • Care to play with grub2-graphical?

    UPDATES:
    November 2, 2009:
         1) Added a section to troubleshooting for flickering graphical menus
    October 28, 2009:
         1) Added a section to troubleshooting for failing to parse the block device
         2) Fixed a few outdated pieces and typos
    October 10, 2009:
         1) Added grub2-icons-circlestarts to AUR, a nice set of many different OS icons
             * It will be in the binary repos when I get the chance (and if I don't forget!)
    July 5, 2009:
         1) Troubleshooting section for an error reading /dev/fd0 nag and a small tip on the install section
    OVERVIEW:
    I've been working on (and succeeded in) getting Colin Bennett's code http://grub.gibibit.com/ to run in Arch. I hadn't seen it elsewhere, even from the major distros (except ubuntu's launchpad https://code.launchpad.net/~colinb/grub/gfxmenu ). I've only seen legacy grub wallpaper mods (grub-gfxboot) and animation patches (grub-gfxmenu, which the ubuntu2 theme and my hack theme mimic btw), not THIS grub2 mod. So, I figured I might as well try to get it working. The good news is, it appears to be slowly merging into the official grub2.
    Non-Arch distros: All of this can be done on a non-Arch distro in a similar way. Instead of using the given makepkg commands, you would need to manually handle dependencies listed in my PKGBUILD files (the right Ruby stuff is especially important; it will compile without ruby, but not correctly) and then use the typical "./configure; make; sudo make install" (or your distro's standard packaging method if you want to do that) on the source tarballs listed in the PKGBUILD source=() lines. If you have no idea what any of that jargon means, you should ask on your OS's forums and I'm sure someone will assist you. Non-Arch distros can also grab the theme tarballs from http://hateanthem.dreamhosters.com/arch/build/ and either extract them to /boot/grub/themes/ or package them for your OS if you can (I'm sure others will appreciate it). If you do so, you are welcome to send them to me if you wish and I can put them up on the same server as all of these files. For those of you on Ubuntu, to answer your question: no, Ubuntu's grub2 does not have gfxmenu capabilities yet. Either wait for it to be merged into grub2 or ask someone to package this for you (be sure to mention when you are asking however that grub2-gfxmenu is not the same as just grub, grub2, grub-gfx, grub-gfxboot, or grub-gfxmenu, as there is understandable confusion to the difference). As for troubleshooting, most of the troubleshooting here will also work on other distributions except for pacman commands, which you would need to deal with yourself accordingly (fyi, pacman -U installs a local Arch package; you would sudo make install or dpkg -i somePackage or rpm -i somePackage or whatever in your case).
    Below are the author's default themes (awesome!) and the quick Arch "concept theme" I made (crappy, but works; hence "concept"):
    [EDIT: I removed these screenshots from photobucket.. just see the author's page screenshots for a good idea]
    http://grub.gibibit.com/Themes
    INTRO NOTES:
    A [Assumptions]: This how-to assumes that you already know/have:
        1) Your hard drive device names/numbers (ie /dev/sdXY) for your /boot and / partition(s)
            * See /etc/fstab or the mount command and your grub.cfg/menu.lst
        2) GENERAL Arch Linux experience/knowledge for:
            * PKGBUILDS: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ABS … he_ABS_way
            * PACMAN: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman
            * AUR: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR
            * YAOURT: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt
            * GRUB: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB
            * GRUB2: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB2
               * See your /boot/grub/grub.cfg or /boot/grub/menu.lst
    B [Miscellaneous]: Things you should know before starting:
        1) There are TWO pkgbuilds/packages needed: grub2-gfxmenu-overlay and grub2-gfxmenu
            * The former is mandatory themes, icons, etc. The latter is the grub2 patched with gfxmenu stuff
        2) Grub2's numbering/ordering is different than legacy grub's and, sometimes, your system's
            * Hard drives still start at 0, but partitions start from 1
            * For some, "/dev/sdb" is "hd0" in grub, counter-intuitively
        3) Only try this if you have time/patience/experience/knowledge to fix it
            * However, this is NOT as hard/long/tedious as it looks; I'm very thorough
            * Oh, and for whatever reason, this loads/works PAINFULLY slowly in VirtualBox
               * Don't bother outside of practice..
        4) VERY IMPORTANT: Old posts here use an outdated menuentry format!
            * It can crash grub2
            * NEW, CORRECT lines look like: menuentry "Arch Linux" --class "arch" {
            * OLD, INCORRECT lines look like: menuentry "Arch|class=linuxmint,linux,os" { 
               * Grub2-gfxmenu-bzr used this
            * Grub2-gfxmenu-bzr package is OLD. I use self-contained src pkgs the author provides now
               * Don't use that old stuff any more
    INSTALLATION & SPECIAL SETUP INFO:
    * Split Boot = Separate / and /boot partitions
    * If you're Split Boot, 64 Bit, LVM, some special setup, or confused/lost, see the respective areas before proceeding
    * You can skip Install Steps 1-7 if you use binaries or yaourt a'la Intro Notes A
       * If you have yaourt installed and ready, just yaourt -S grub2-gfxmenu and skip to step 8
       * If you want to use binaries in pacman, add to /etc/pacman.conf and pacman -Sy grub2-gfxmenu:
          * For 32 Bit:
             [archfox]                                                                               
             Server = http://hateanthem.dreamhosters.com/arch/i686
          * For 64 Bit:
             [archfox]                                                                               
             Server = http://hateanthem.dreamhosters.com/arch/x86_64
    Typical Installation (esp. 32 Bit Arch):
        1) See Intro Notes A & B
        2) Back up /boot/grub/grub.cfg, /boot/grub/menu.lst, or whatever you use
        3) Remove your bootloader via pacman -R [grub, grub2, whatever]
        4) Download the grub2-gfxmenu-overlay files:
            * http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/grub2 … u-overlay/
        5) Put them in $HOME/abs/local/grub2-gfxmenu-overlay
        6) Make and install the package via makepkg -c -i -s from that directory
        7) Repeat steps 4-6 for the grub2-gfxmenu files
            * http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/grub2 … 2-gfxmenu/
        8) As sudo/root, run: /sbin/grub-install /dev/sda
            * If you have multiple HD's, change this to the drive you want to boot grub from
        9) Edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg to match your partition setup (if necessary)
       10) Double check your work before rebooting
            * pacman -Qs grub2 should show grub2-gfxmenu-overlay AND grub2-gfxmenu [1-7]
            * ls /boot/grub should show a bunch of "mod" files [8]
            * be sure /boot/grub/grub.cfg points to the right partitions [9]
       :D) Finished!
            * The default themes have a pretty low res, and aren't as cool as some of the others
               * Make sure you have the proper gfxmode for your theme in grub.cfg if you use non-defaults
               * See the latter half of this tutorial for help and custom theme/icon stuff
    Installation on 64 Bit Arch:
        * FYI, I hear grub2 svn, and thus the next version of gfxmenu, adds native 64 bit support
        * For the least hassle, use binaries, then follow Typical Install #8-10:
           * The 64 bit binary repository info is above the Typical Install section
        * Alternatively, if you still want to COMPILE this with makepkg.. [Steps 1-7]
           * You'll need either a 32 bit chroot/environment..
              * http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arc … _Arch64.3F
           * .. or you can use a regular 32 bit install
           * Either way, change DESTARCH in the pkgbuild to x86_64
        * Further help: Shaika-dzari's posts in this thread may be useful, but using his "-bzr" files is not advised!
           * His syntax and grub2-gfxmenu-bzr are OLD; the former can crash new Grub2! (See Intro Notes B #4)
           * If you're determined to use his -bzr, use the old syntax! If you use the new pkgs, don't use his syntax!
    Notes for a Split Boot, LVM, maybe RAID:
        * All of these users will likely need a similar grub.cfg
           * Example Split Boot cfgs in Troubleshooting and later in this thread
        * You will likely run into multiple problems listed under Troubleshooting; relax and expect it
           * You might spare yourself problems by following Troubleshooting #6 before rebooting
              * ... or cause problems you might not have had! Probably prevent 'em, though :)
        * Split Booters: if that doesn't help, try looking at boriscougar's posts here
           * His syntax is outdated and will crash Grub2, however! (See Intro Notes B #4)
        * LVM/RAIDers:
           * You need the kernel root= parts pointing to /dev/mapper/blahblah
           * See lssjbrolli's posts here, esp. #19, for other grub.cfgs IF you have trouble
              * His syntax is outdated and will crash Grub2, however! (See Intro Notes B #4)
    Notes for Others:
        * If you are lost/confused, please post here
        * If you have another "special case", I'm afraid I probably can't help you
           * You are welcome to try anyway and report your results; it might help someone else
    TROUBLESHOOTING:
    * Check ALL of the instructions and the Intro Notes A & B again
    * Press 't' in graphical mode to switch to text mode, it's more forgiving with errors
    * Press 'e' in text mode to edit an entry. Useful key combinations are shown there
    * See post #78 or #63 for starting over from the Live CD; modify it to restore legacy grub
       * Be sure your device node/name is correct, as per the Intro Notes
    * Here is an example Split Boot grub.cfg menuentry with descriptions:
       # Entry 0 - Arch Linux                                           
       menuentry "Arch Linux" --class "arch" {
           # Below should be /boot, where the kernel/initrd/bootloader is. Here, it's HD 1, Partition 5 
           set root=(hd0,5)
           # Below is /, where most of your installation is. HD 1, partition 6
           # Note the backwards drive lettering/order on my pc!
           # Grub calls my drive "hd0" while Arch labels the drive "/dev/sdb"
           # Yours MAY or MAY NOT do that
           # Also note, BECAUSE this is for a Split Boot, there is no /boot prefix
           # Lastly, some distros seem to fail with /dev/disk/by-label entries, others work fine
           linux /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdb6 ro
           initrd /kernel26.img
    1) During grub-install, you get a nag about not being able to read /boot/grub/core.img
        * I think this is fixed in a grub2 svn release, so hopefully the next grub2-gfxmenu will remove this section..
        * Two methods.. both are hackish, but either 'works'.. I prefer Method 2, but it's more work + empty space..
        * METHOD #1:
           * This installs grub to your root partition instead of /boot (method obviously assumes a Split Boot):
              * It will obviously not properly coincide with pacman installs/updates of grub2-gfxmenu stuff normally
                 * You can unmount /boot to upgrade/install grub2-gfxmenu stuff for now with pacman
                 * Re-mount /boot when you're done installing/upgrading said grub2-gfxmenu stuff
                 * If grub2-gfxmenu is updated, try installing again normally WITH /boot mounted first
              * Your old grub folder is still on your /boot partition; I think it may be moved to avoid confusion
              * If you move/remove the grub partition on ROOT (until properly installed of course), grub will break
           1) mkdir /mnt/tmp
           2) umount /dev/sda1 (assuming your /boot is sda1 of course from here)
           3) mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/tmp
           4) cp -r /mnt/tmp/grub /boot
           5) Check ls /boot/grub shows the expected mod files and such, then try /sbin/grub-install /dev/sda again
           6) Edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg before you reboot; follow the tutorial otherwise
           7) Be sure to re-mount /boot if you're not going to reboot after this tutorial / installing gfxmenu stuff
        * METHOD #2:
           * This installs grub2-gfxmenu "correctly", but puts a little empty space in front of your /boot partition
           1) Boot into a LiveCD and resize your /boot partition; graphically (gparted) or CLI if you know how
               * I decreased its size by 10 megs, which is likely MAJOR overkill, but it worked, and I can spare 10mb
           2) Move the resized partition to the right, so the space you freed up is in front of it
           3) Boot into the Arch LiveCD if you aren't there already, and go root
           4) mkdir /mnt/root
           5) mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/root (assuming sda3 is your root partition)
           6) mount -t proc proc /mnt/root/proc
           7) mount -t sysfs sys /mnt/root/sys
           8) mount -o bind /dev /mnt/root/dev
           9) chroot /mnt/root /bin/bash
          10) mount /dev/sda1 /boot   (assuming sda1 is /boot.. you can mount /home now too, if needed)
          11) pacman -U /path/to/grub2-gfxmenu*pkg.tar.gz (only if its the only grub2-gfxmenu pkg there)
          12) pacman -U /path/to/kernel26*pkg.tar.gz (only if its the only kernel pkg there)
          13) Edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg before you reboot; follow the tutorial otherwise
    2) During grub-install, you get a nag about /dev/fd0 or something of the sort
        * Your device map is wrong; edit /boot/grub/device.map accordingly and remove/edit such incorrect entries
           * You may also need to run grub-mkdevicemap BEFORE doing this, but probably not
           * Fd0 is the floppy disk, remove it if you don't actually have such a drive
        * Alternatively, try adding --recheck to the grub-install /dev/yourDevice command
    3) The text menu won't load, and you're dropped to a limited prompt
        * Check that you are using the new/correct grub2-gfxmenu menuentry format (See Intro Notes B #4)
        * You may have run the command incorrectly (or not at all) in Step 8, or your /boot changed numbers/letters
           * You would probably need to start over from a livecd, if so
    4) The graphical menu won't load, but the text one does
        * Check that stuff exists in /boot/grub/themes
        * Check that your set theme= line is properly suited to your system in grub.cfg:
           * Most people need: set theme="/boot/grub/themes/themeName"
           * A Split Boot / LVM / RAID / etc needs: set theme="/grub/themes/themeName/theme.txt"
        * Split Boots / LVM/ RAID/ etc should check that set root= exists near the top and points to /boot
    5) The graphical menu loads, but you have boxes/squares where fonts should be
        * Add this (set to match YOUR /boot) somewhere near the TOP of your grub.cfg:
           * set root=(hd0,5)
        * Your loadfont lines ALL probably need to look like this (no /boot prefix):
           * loadfont /grub/fonts/10x20.pf2
           * This command with sudo/root permissions should be able to do it for you (make a backup!):
              * cd /boot/grub/ && sed -i 's|/boot||g' grub.cfg
              * This -could- affect (good or bad) other things. Fix if needed, before or after rebooting
    6) The graphical menu loads, but when you select the os, it sits at "Press any key to continue"
        * Check that grub.cfg's "set root=" line you have for that menuentry points to /boot
           * Grub numbering has changed in grub2 (See Intro Notes B #2)
           * Try [inc/dec]rementing the [drive/partition] by 1 number/letter
           * Remove /boot from the front of stuff if you are running a Split Boot / LVM / RAID / etc
    7) The graphical menu loads, but you get a nag about a failure to parse the block device
        * Check all of the other troubleshooting first to see if it applies / works first
        * Check that your kernel/initrd lines point to the correct places (remember partitions start from 1 now!)
        * Check /etc/mkinitcpio.conf for hooks you no longer use (like fbsplash perhaps)
           * Packages used by your hooks must be installed, like fbsplash for the fbsplash hook
    8) The graphical menu loads, but you get a nag about finding root / init not found, or a similar error
        * Check that grub.cfg is pointing to the right place in that menuentry's "linux" and "initrd" lines
           * Grub numbering has changed in grub2 (See Intro Notes B #2)
           * Try [inc/dec]rementing the [drive/partition] by 1 number/letter
           * Remove /boot from the front if you are running a Split Boot / LVM / RAID / etc
        * Try running the fallback/failsafe entry
           * If it works, you need to mkinitcpio -p kernel26 from there
    9) The graphical menu loads, but flickers horribly
        * Try changing the resolution, perhaps to a default/1024x768
    10) You're on an eeePC or use an intel 800/900 graphics chipset and can't use your native resolution
        * NOTE: I've had reports that this no longer works or compiles or something recently, so YMMV
        * Workaround until someone tries patching and reporting via grub2-915resolution's patch(es):
           1) Compile (NOT install!) grub2-915resolution from AUR via makepkg (or yaourt and cancelling)
               * Or grab 915resolution.mod from someone/somewhere else, perhaps
           2) Install grub2-gfxmenu
           3) Copy 915resolution.mod from step 1's MAIN source directory to /boot/grub/
               * If you used yaourt and cancelled before installing, try /tmp/yaourt-tmp-yourname
           4) Insert/change the following in grub.cfg [order matters I guess?]:
               * insmod 915resolution
               * 915resolution 34 1024 600 (or whatever else you want)
               * set gfxmode 1024x600 (or whatever else you want)
           5) Edit your theme's theme.txt file to look nice on the new res, if it's not already made for it
    TWEAKING:
    1) Changing the resolution
        * Edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg, it's one of the first lines (set gfxmode=)
           * I'm not sure what it supports, but I got up to 1280x1024 without problems
           * You may need to change your theme's configuration file for it to look decent under a new res
    2) Changing the theme
        * Edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg, it's one of the earlier lines (set theme=)
        * Themes are in /boot/grub/themes
    3) Changing the icons (Thanks to kholddagger post #97)
        * /boot/grub/themes/icons , seemingly PNG only, scaled according to theme/resolution in use
        * Add your OS icon by changing the --class option in your menuentry to MATCH the .png
           * Ie, for /boot/grub/themes/icons/fedora.png:
              * menuentry "Fedora Linux" --class "fedora" {
           * Don't like a default icon, but don't want them overwritten by updates?
              * Make it "distro2". Ie distro2.png and --class "distro2"
        * I am partial to http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/ … tent=95970 "Circle Starts"
    4) Adding new distros
        * See Tweaking #3 for changing/adding icons
        * Clone Arch's menuentry and tweak it to match your other OS
           * Search your other OS's /boot folder/partition for kernel and init filenames
    5) Advanced theme tweaking
        * See the author's website and documentation:
           * http://grub.gibibit.com/Theme_format
           * http://grub.gibibit.com/gfxmenu_design
    6) Advanced font tweaking
        * See the author's website and documentation:
           * http://grub.gibibit.com/New_font_format
           * The newest version "supports UTF-8 fonts", but I'm not sure what that even means :D
    KNOWN AVAILABLE THEMES:
    * All custom themes so far are set up for 1024x768 and the defaults for 640x480
       * Most of them are made by Xabz, and packaged by me
       * If you have alternate resolution layouts for any of them, PLEASE share!
    * If you make any new ones, PLEASE share! :)
    1) The first two screenshots are defaults
    2) The third blue screenshot is my theme, aftermathblue (previously archfox), a tweak of the defaults
        * It has since been updated to 0.2 and looks a little different; certainly much less hackish
        * The name refers to the wallpaper "Aftermath" from the arch linux wallpapers package, turned blue.
        * The screenshot's icons are tweaked Google Images results for "windows icon" and "arch linux icon"
        * If you have suggestions, post 'em
    3) There are several really nice ones made by a guy in Chile named "xabz":
        * See above "Typical Install" for binary repositories containing these theme packages
           * You can also find them in the AUR; they are prefixed with "grub2-theme-"
        * You can see screenshots of them on page 4 of this thread, post #94
    4) There is another awesome one here by some presumably German person:
        * http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/grub2 … st-1835914
        * I can't seem to find a download link for it, only a picture :(
    Last edited by FrozenFox (2010-04-01 16:41:21)

    set gfxmode=1024x768
    insmod ext2
    insmod biosdisk
    insmod pc
    insmod font
    insmod vbe
    insmod gfxterm
    insmod videotest
    insmod tga
    insmod png
    insmod gfxmenu
    #set menuviewer="terminal"
    set menuviewer="gfxmenu"
    set theme="/grub/themes/ubuntu2/theme.txt"
    #set theme="/boot/grub/themes/ubuntu1/theme.txt"
    #set theme="/boot/grub/themes/winter/theme.txt"
    #set theme="/boot/grub/themes/proto/theme.txt"
    # TODO: fix GRUB script parser -- it doesn't handle a space at the end of the line in a menu entry.
    #### BEGIN MENU ####
    set timeout=8
    set default="0"
    set fallback="0 1"
    menuentry "Arch Linux|class=ubuntu,linux,os" {
    linux /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/mapper/volgroup0-lvolroot ro quiet
    initrd /kernel26.img
    menuentry "Arch Linux Fallback|class=linuxmint,linux,os" {
    set root=(hd0,1)
    linux /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/mapper/volgroup0-lvolroot ro
    initrd /kernel26-fallback.img
    menuentry "Bitmap graphics test" {
    videotest -d bitmaps
    #### END MENU ####
    # Choose the font for gfxterm.
    set gfxterm_font="smoothansi"
    # Load fonts.
    # Generated with:
    # ls *.pf2 | perl -pe 's{^}{loadfont /boot/grub/fonts/}'
    loadfont /grub/fonts/10x20.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/4x6.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/5x7.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/5x8.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/6x10.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/6x12.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/6x13.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/6x13B.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/6x13O.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/6x9.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/7x13.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/7x13B.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/7x13O.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/7x14.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/7x14B.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/8x13.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/8x13B.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/8x13O.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/9x15.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/9x15B.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/9x18.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/9x18B.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-10.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-12.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-14.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-18.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-24.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-8.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-Bold-10.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-Bold-12.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-Bold-14.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-Bold-18.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-Bold-24.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/Helvetica-Bold-8.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-10.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-12.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-14.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-18.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-24.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-8.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-Bold-10.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-Bold-12.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-Bold-14.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-Bold-18.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-Bold-24.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/New_Century_Schoolbook-Bold-8.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/anorexia.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/aqui.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/clR6x12.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/cure.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/drift.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/edges.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/fkp.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/gelly.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/glisp-bold.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/glisp.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/helvR12.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/kates.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/lime.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/mints-mild.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/mints-strong.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/nu.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/smoothansi.pf2
    loadfont /grub/fonts/snap.pf2
    i use 2 hdd. From the first hdd i use a 100MB for /boot with ext2 -> set root=(hd0,1) <- ,
    and the rest from the first hdd and the second is used in a LVM configuration with 2 partitions lvolhome and lvolroot -> root=/dev/mapper/volgroup0-lvolroot <-
    and my fstab
    # /etc/fstab: static file system information
    # <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
    none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0
    none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
    #/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
    #/dev/dvd /media/dvd auto ro,user,noauto,unhide 0 0
    /dev/mapper/volgroup0-lvolhome /home ext3 defaults,noatime 0 1
    /dev/mapper/volgroup0-lvolroot / ext3 defaults,noatime 0 1
    UUID=1c16c6e9-1459-4547-a4ab-04b8f45daca6 /boot ext2 defaults,noatime 0 1
    UUID=bf143434-eb96-4155-9339-5b83521520d7 swap swap defaults,noatime 0 0

  • Experiences from an new user

    I've been using these forums for a while now, but haven't introduced myself yet.
    After reading the 'Has the arch philosophy changed? No.' thread i felt it could be useful if i listed some of my experiences as a new arch user.
    I have been working with computers as hobby from 1982, switched to x86 pc's around 1991 and learned a lot about Dos and hardware.
    For the past 8 years i have been helping people with windows systems, and tried suse linux a few times, but felt it wasn't mature enough yet.
    3 years ago i followed an education for MCSA and since then have been working as  2nd/3rd line helpdesk employee for a company that almost exclusively uses M$.
    The more i learned about M$, the more trouble i had in getting it to do what i wanted, not what THEY wanted.
    Early this year i decided to give linux a try again and installed suse linux 9.3.
    Although it worked, and i could do almost anything i needed (except some windows games), it had far too many packages that i didn't want.
    Several things i wanted to used were not in their collection, or had older versions that didn't work good enough.
    Switching to newer versions meant i had to figure out a lot of dependency errors and solve them.
    their packet management tool, yast2 had a lot of drawbacks, unless you used only their packages.
    Also it was very tough to switch to another WM/DE .
    Suse had automated so much in their configuration that it was far from easy to change things, unless you settled for the options the provided tools had.
    The main difference with M$ was that the documentation is freely available and the accompanying tools were a  lot better than the M$ tools.
    I started looking for another distro, found distrowatch and read many of the articles about different distros.
    Arch drew my attention, i quickly found the wiki and could see a lot of topics were covered in it.
    I kept suse and windows in a multi-boot system, installed arch about 10 times over the next 3 weeks, asked a few questions on the forum, experimented for about a month with  LVM and Raid, then made a final setup plan using FTP-install.
    Now arch is the only OS installed on that pc, for M$ i use VMware, and i don't miss suse.
    I estimate i have used AL approx 3 months now, and have learned more about linux in those  2months, than in the about 2 years (spread over 6 years or so) of using Suse.
    Sofar i have stayed out of testing, but have used the AUR and even tried some modifications on an existing pkgbuild.
    Soon i will be setting up a LAMP server on my former windows DC to gain experience setting up forums and wiki, and after that i probably will try to get my laptop runnning with arch.
    I am very pleased with AL's speed and flexibility and have found the community to be helpful (although a bit slow sometimes).

    I should state that the aforementioned thread brings up the point that (paraphrasing) you learn alot with arch, but after a while, you learn that things could be simpler.
    I'm not saying I agree with it, and I find this thread here to be in nice contrast with that one.
    My experiences are similar to your own, and while I understand what Dusty was saying, I still have yet to find a "simpler" distro which is akin to arch.  Sure, automated stuff would be really nice, *if* you could override it, which is usually not the case.
    Arch is a middle ground - between Slackware and (Suse/Fedora/Ubuntu).  Some things are automated, but not such an extent that they become problems.  Things which are automated can always be overridden.
    That's what I like about arch.  It generally works like one of the auto-distros, only you need a little more knowledge, and a little more time.
    Lone_Wolf wrote:I am very pleased with AL's speed and flexibility and have found the community to be helpful (although a bit slow sometimes).
    What? Slow how?

  • [Solved]Variable read/write speed with WD Passport 1 TB external drive

    I have this drive connected to my Arch Linux box. Whenever I transfer large files (I use it to backup) the write speed drops from 30M/s to sometimes a few KB/s and then speeds up again ! This drive is connected via an USB 2.0 port with a specific cable which is 2.0 at one end (to connect to my motherboard) and 3.0 at the other end (to connect to the drive). Could this be related to the kernel SES driver which is used (buffer problem maybe)?
    This speed problem is that serious that backups take very long and become almost not feasable.
    Thanks in advance
    Last edited by Strider (2014-02-02 21:00:54)

    Jason,
    this drive has 3 use cases (my PC is dual boot Arch / Windows Vista) :
    1) Backup my PC linux box using a rsync front end (luckybackup) here source and target are ext4 in target always and source is either ext4 or lvm on raid.
    2) Backup of my PC Windows Vista using an own written script which uses ntfsclone where source and target are ntfs.
    3) Backup of my Windows 7 laptop
    The problem is that I have performance issues in scenario's 1 & 2 (but not always) and never in case 3. I think this might finally be hardware related ...
    Just before writing this post I connected the drive and it didn't even appear in my file manager (nemo under cinnamon 2.0). So I ran a journalctl and here is the outcome :
    Feb 02 09:55:33 Megatron kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-pci
    Feb 02 09:55:33 Megatron kernel: usb 2-4: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci
    Feb 02 09:55:33 Megatron mtp-probe[911]: checking bus 2, device 4: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.2/usb2/2-4"
    Feb 02 09:55:33 Megatron mtp-probe[911]: bus: 2, device: 4 was not an MTP device
    Feb 02 09:55:33 Megatron kernel: usb-storage 2-4:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
    Feb 02 09:55:33 Megatron kernel: scsi12 : usb-storage 2-4:1.0
    Feb 02 09:55:33 Megatron kernel: usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
    Feb 02 09:55:34 Megatron kernel: scsi 12:0:0:0: Direct-Access     WD       My Passport 07A8 1049 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
    Feb 02 09:55:34 Megatron kernel: scsi 12:0:0:1: Enclosure         WD       SES Device       1049 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
    Feb 02 09:55:34 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] Spinning up disk...
    Feb 02 09:56:04 Megatron systemd-udevd[186]: worker [926] /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.2/usb2/2-4/2-4:1.0/host12/target12:0:0/12:0:0:1 timeout; kill it
    Feb 02 09:56:04 Megatron systemd-udevd[186]: seq 1876 '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.2/usb2/2-4/2-4:1.0/host12/target12:0:0/12:0:0:1' killed
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: usb 2-4: reset high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: .ready
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] 1953458176 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB)
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] Write Protect is off
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] Mode Sense: 53 00 10 08
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] No Caching mode page found
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] No Caching mode page found
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel:  sde: sde1 sde2
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: ses 12:0:0:1: Attached Enclosure device
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron systemd-udevd[186]: worker [926] terminated by signal 9 (Killed)
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] No Caching mode page found
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] Assuming drive cache: write through
    Feb 02 09:56:06 Megatron kernel: sd 12:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI disk
    Feb 02 09:56:07 Megatron org.gtk.Private.UDisks2VolumeMonitor[592]: ### debug: emit_signal: 0x175a210
    Feb 02 09:56:37 Megatron systemd-udevd[186]: worker [908] /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.2/usb2/2-4/2-4:1.0/host12/target12:0:0/12:0:0:0/block/sde/sde1 timeout; kill it
    Feb 02 09:56:37 Megatron systemd-udevd[186]: seq 1884 '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.2/usb2/2-4/2-4:1.0/host12/target12:0:0/12:0:0:0/block/sde/sde1' killed
    Feb 02 09:56:37 Megatron systemd-udevd[186]: worker [928] /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.2/usb2/2-4/2-4:1.0/host12/target12:0:0/12:0:0:0/block/sde/sde2 timeout; kill it
    Feb 02 09:56:37 Megatron systemd-udevd[186]: seq 1885 '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.2/usb2/2-4/2-4:1.0/host12/target12:0:0/12:0:0:0/block/sde/sde2' killed
    Feb 02 09:56:37 Megatron kernel: usb 2-4: reset high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci
    Feb 02 09:56:38 Megatron systemd-udevd[186]: worker [908] terminated by signal 9 (Killed)
    Feb 02 09:56:38 Megatron systemd-udevd[186]: worker [928] terminated by signal 9 (Killed)
    Something also worth knowing : the drive is know for being a heavy power drain on the usb 2.0 port (it does not have an external power connection and gets its power only via usb) . So I bought a specific cable with 3.0 at one end and 2 usb 2.0 at the other end : one for transferring data and one for power.

  • [SOLVED] HELP: Can't partition drives

    I'm doing a fresh install of my machine. I was running fakeRAID before and now I want to switch software RAID. But everytime I try to run cfdisk /dev/sda I get an error saying "FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 2: Partition ends after end-of-disk. press any key exit cfdisk". How do I remove the old RAID or deactivate it. I turned it of in the BIOS.
    Last edited by fettouhi (2011-08-04 06:20:52)

    gregor wrote:
    fettouhi wrote:my installation is messed now with software raid. I have a pv named /dev/md127 inside my vg0 that I can't remove. I try to
    pvremove /dev/md127 but I keep getting the error PV belongs to Volume Group vg0. How do I remove /dev/md127?
    i advice an re-install ,it's not worth the trouble...
    Yep, did that an usd the installer to delete all lvm and raid. Then I reooted and everything was back to normal.

  • Oracleasm Createdisk error

    Hello ,
    I have just been trying to label oracle disk.
    here is the error I get .
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    Unable to open device "/dev/sddc": Device or resource busy
    I have already tried the solutions that were listed for this problem, but no success.
    SELINUX is already disabled.
    here is some additional info ...
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    Device "/dev/sddc1" is not marked as an ASM disk
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    Checking if ASM is loaded: yes
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    ORACLEASM_GID=dba
    ORACLEASM_SCANBOOT=true
    ORACLEASM_SCANORDER=""
    ORACLEASM_SCANEXCLUDE=""
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    Linux version is 5.3 .. running oracle 11g R2
    Thanks
    Saad
    Edited by: Saad on Sep 18, 2011 12:45 AM

    This is the metalink note, 1303976.1, I was talking about. This is another way to prove that device is busy, which we have already proved that device is busy (means used by one thing or another). Once you get mkfs working then creatdisk should work with no errors.
    You can double, check that LVM, mount, RAID, MP, or similar thing is not already accessing the disk in question. For MP, you can shutdown another node, pull the cable from 2nd HBA/port and try it again. Due to limited access to your environment and due to lack of any logs, I think the options are just hit and trial and find out what is using that device. There are specific steps to implement mp, and please make sure no other VM or RAID is causing this issue.
    Thanks,
    Rohit Chandok
    http://www.rohitchandok.com

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