Despite all the help I had, way back in October 2012, I still never fixed 
that RAID1.  At this point I think I know what went wrong.  I would like 
to try to fix it so that I can upgrade the Ubuntu LTS version -- I'm still 
using 12.04.5 LTS.

See the output below from df, parted -l, /proc/mdstat and /etc/fstab. 
There is a /boot directory, but that is in the / partition.  The /boot 
partition is not mounted and it isn't in the RAID1.

I have been doing software updates, and kernels have been installed, but 
the only one I can boot from is the one I installed originally.  I assume 
that since the /boot partition isn't mounted, the dozen or so kernels I 
see are in the /boot directory in the / partition, and there are 341 MB of 
files in there now.

I'm hoping there is a way to get the appropriate files into the /boot 
partition, get that mounted, get rid of the /boot directory in the / 
partition and have the /boot partition mirrored on the two drives.

Is there hope?  Do any of you know how I should proceed?

Mike


$ df -HT
Filesystem     Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/md1       ext4      3.0T  296G  2.6T  11% /
udev           devtmpfs  8.4G   13k  8.4G   1% /dev
tmpfs          tmpfs     3.4G  906k  3.4G   1% /run
none           tmpfs     5.3M     0  5.3M   0% /run/lock
none           tmpfs     8.4G   52M  8.4G   1% /run/shm


$ sudo parted -l

Model: ATA ST3000DM001-9YN1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 3001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name   Flags
  1      10.5MB  220MB   210MB                /boot  bios_grub
  2      220MB   34.6GB  34.4GB               swap   raid
  3      34.6GB  3000GB  2966GB               /      raid


Model: ATA ST3000DM001-9YN1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 3001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name   Flags
  1      10.5MB  220MB   210MB                /boot  bios_grub
  2      220MB   34.6GB  34.4GB               swap   raid
  3      34.6GB  3000GB  2966GB               /      raid


Model: Linux Software RAID Array (md)
Disk /dev/md0: 34.4GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: loop

Number  Start  End     Size    File system     Flags
  1      0.00B  34.4GB  34.4GB  linux-swap(v1)


Model: Linux Software RAID Array (md)
Disk /dev/md1: 2966GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: loop

Number  Start  End     Size    File system  Flags
  1      0.00B  2966GB  2966GB  ext4



$ cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md1 : active raid1 sda3[0] sdb3[1]
       2896392511 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]

md0 : active raid1 sda2[0] sdb2[1]
       33553336 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU]

unused devices: <none>



# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
# / was on /dev/md1 during installation
UUID=f8a6d38d-3dd0-465e-b622-1cffdde52c1b /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/md0 during installation
UUID=f8be4924-e4a8-20ba-f284-3a90581a5322 none            swap    sw              0       0



On Fri, 5 Oct 2012, Mike Miller wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Oct 2012, ron at ron-l-j.com wrote:
>
>> The first thing I would try is booting into a shell and running fsck on
>> your boot disk.
>> Reboot the machine and press e in the grub screen for edit.
>> Go to the kernel line and press e to edit that line.
>> Then add to the kernel line
>> 
>> init=/bin/bash
>> 
>> when you boot you go straight to the shell.
>> then do a file system check on your boot drive
>> fsck -t ext3 /dev/sdax
>> t is for file system type in this case ext3
>> and the x in sdax is your partition number.
>> sda is for sata drives, if you have an ide drive use hdax
>> 
>> Most of the time its a file system error and was very common when I was
>> doing raid arrays in my advanced linux classes. Bad super block is also
>> common.
>> If you are still having troubles run fsck from a live cd/usb. But you will
>> have to run the cd in live mode, mount the offending drive, and chroot
>> into the drive.
>> As a last resort you can update-grub from the live cd after you have
>> chroot'ed into you installed environment.
>> Let me know what you encounter.
>
>
> Thanks, Ron.  (I'm cc'ing you in case you are doing digests only and want to 
> see this before the digest comes in.)
>
> Did you see that I was able to boot up to the window manager login prompt 
> using an earlier version of the kernel?  Can I just take it from there?
>
> My impression right now is that the problem was caused by my failure to 
> reboot for weeks after installing some packages that required rebooting. Then 
> I installed 400 more packages before rebooting.  Is that possibly the cause 
> of my troubles?  Could it be that I just need to fix the packages and reboot?
>
> The other issue is that I have a RAID1, so mirrored drives, and I think that 
> means I don't want to fsck them one at a time.  df shows this:
>
> $ sudo df -HT
> Filesystem     Type      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
> /dev/md1       ext4      3.0T  220G  2.6T   8% /
> udev           devtmpfs  8.4G   13k  8.4G   1% /dev
> tmpfs          tmpfs     3.4G  832k  3.4G   1% /run
> none           tmpfs     5.3M     0  5.3M   0% /run/lock
> none           tmpfs     8.4G  148k  8.4G   1% /run/shm
>
> Does that mean I would fsck /dev/md1?
>
> Thanks again.  I really appreciate your taking the time to reply.
>
> (One thing I've learned -- I should run package-manager daily and try to 
> reboot soon when it is required.  I often have a lot of stuff running that I 
> don't want to kill, so reboots are a hassle.)
>
> Mike
>