[SOLVED] LVM GRUB2 no volume groups found?

Question

Hi.
I have installed Arch with LVM on a macbook pro. Since I installed /boot inside the LVM, I had to install GRUB2-efi also (the mac uses EFI).
When I boot, I am able to get to the GRUB2 menu but when I try to start Arch, I get this error:
No volume groups found
ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor number of root device '(Arch_Linux-boot)'
And right before the GRUB2 menu appears, an error message flashes so quickly I can only make out the word "failed".
Arch is in an extended partition (/dev/sda3) with root, boot, var, home and swap on their own separate partitions.
In /etc/default/grub (NOT on the CD), I added "lvm2" to GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES and added "root=(Arch_Linux-boot)" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX. Arch_Linux is the volume group and boot is the boot partition. During installation, I set USELVM="yes" (in the first configuration file in the configure system phase) and added an lvm2 hook in the mkinitcpio configuration file (during installation also).
Also, when I try to boot OS X (using GRUB2), it seems to boot (spits out some console stuff) then gets stuck. By holding Option at startup and selecting the OS X partition, I can boot into OS X. The same doesn't work with Arch.
My guess is that it's not finding the volume group (Arch_Linux) because I got the configuration file wrong or something.
So is
#Settings I added in /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="root=(Arch_Linux-boot)"
GRUB_PRELOAD_MODULES="lvm2"
valid? Or is something wrong here?
Last edited by Splooshie123 (2012-04-03 02:35:54)

Answer 1

Lennie wrote:In your other thread you used the words 'extended partition' and 'LVM' as if they mean the same thing, but they are actually two different thing. So which of them did you use? If you just installed Arch on logical partitions, then you don't need to do any special configuration because of that. Linux doesn't care if it's installed on primary or logical partition(s).
Sorry if I wasn't clear. I installed Arch in several logical partitions within an extended partition.
I believe I'm close to figuring out what's wrong. Apparently I am able to access the logical partitions by using the fallback image.
Because the fallback image works but the other one doesn't, it might be the hooks.
I read that the fallback image doesn't load the autodetect hook. I also know that putting a hook before autodetect has the effect of sort of "exempting" the hook from autodetect.
I recall getting a 'no controller found' error when booting the image with autodetect so I'm guessing it might be the sata hook.
I'll try regenerating the images with sata before the autodetect hook.
PS: If my post looks a bit "unformatted" with no spaces between paragraphs, its because I'm typing this from lynx, a text-based web browser, and I'm not that familiar with it yet.