Grub2 install with / on lvm

[jeff]

Greetings -

 

I have been experimenting with an Linux Mint 17 installation for my desktop system.  This is on a new Dell Precision 3610.  After having difficulties getting the Mint installation to complete (grub2 install failed) with software RAID (and trying the Intel IMSM fake raid) I finally purchased a good hardware raid card and installed it in my system (LSI MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i).  Now Mint installs without grub2 install failing during the installation; however, at first boot I get sent to a grub prompt.  After playing around with the SuperGrub2 Disk I think I have isolated the problem.  Here is a description of my system and what I have found.

 

1.  RAID 1 of two 3-TB drives (entire drives, not partitions)

2.  Single drive recognized by BIOS and Mint installer as /dev/sda

3.  Created partitions and lvm logical volumes in GParted and command line prior to install

     /dev/sda1   500MB   /boot/efi   fat32

     /dev/sda2   500MB   /boot   fat32

     /dev/sda3   volume group vg_jab  (left 100MB unallocated at end)

        lv_mintroot   8GB   /

        lv_mintvar   4GB   /var

        lv_mintswap   2GB   [swap]

        lv_minthome   80GB   /home

        lv_mintgis   1000GB   /gis

4.  I will be installing Windows 7 as a VM (using KVM) later in an additional lv.

5.  Interestingly df-h does not show /dev/sda2, and ldblk does not show a mount point for /dev/sda2

6.  Grub settings point to hd0, gpt1.  In grub I see a message of failure reading sector ???? from hd1

 

In SuperGrub2 Disk a linux boot image is not present when selecting Everything.  If I select Everything+ a boot image appears.  Individually going through the options in Extra Grub2 functionality, I get a linux boot image to appear if all I do is enable grub2's LVM support.  I booted from this installed image and tried running grub-install.  A reboot after that did not resolve the issue.  It appears that my grub installation does not have the support for lvm, and it appears that my root partition being on lvm is likely the problem, as somewhere along this path I saw grub referencing the UUID that is my lv_mintroot.

 

I am looking for advice on what might be the best approach to take now.  I have no problems if that means re-doing my partitions and taking / off of lvm.  I am just not sure that is the only problem, or the entire solution, or even the best solution overall.  I would like to hear what my options might be before going through the reinstallation.

 

Please cc me directly, as I am only subscribed to the daily digest.  Thanks.

 

Jeff