ISO installation Issues with Intel VROC RAID1

[Jason Woo]

Hi, 

I created an OEM image and installed it to VROC RAID1 disks, which is configured at BIOS.  I know this is a BIOS/software RAID, so I added "mdraid=mirroring" at config.xml.

<type image="oem" filesystem="ext4" mdraid="mirroring"... 

1. The installer didn't show the BIOS RAID but separate drives. So I picked one of the drives in the RAID to continue the OS installation.

2. Then, at boot up, the system ran into dracut issues, saying the md0 was stopped. I have to use the mdadm to reactivate the disk to continue the boot up.
3. Once logged in, I ran lsblk and found the installation created  the mdadm devices already.

nvme5n1     259:0    0 745.2G  0 disk
├─md126       9:126  0 707.9G  0 raid1
│ ├─md126p1 259:4    0     2M  0 part
│ ├─md126p2 259:5    0    20M  0 part  /boot/efi
│ ├─md126p3 259:6    0   300M  0 part  /boot
│ └─md126p4 259:7    0  15.2G  0 part
│   └─md0     9:0    0  15.2G  0 raid1 /
└─md127       9:127  0     0B  0 md

nvme4n1     259:2    0 745.2G  0 disk
├─md126       9:126  0 707.9G  0 raid1
│ ├─md126p1 259:4    0     2M  0 part
│ ├─md126p2 259:5    0    20M  0 part  /boot/efi
│ ├─md126p3 259:6    0   300M  0 part  /boot
│ └─md126p4 259:7    0  15.2G  0 part
│   └─md0     9:0    0  15.2G  0 raid1 /

4. But actually md0 is in degraded mode with 1 out of 2 drives. I couldn't any drive available to add back to the RAID configuration. 

mdadm --detail /dev/md0
/dev/md0:
           Version : 1.2
     Creation Time : Wed Jun  4 22:54:31 2025
        Raid Level : raid1
        Array Size : 15960000 (15.22 GiB 16.34 GB)
     Used Dev Size : 15960000 (15.22 GiB 16.34 GB)
      Raid Devices : 2
     Total Devices : 1
       Persistence : Superblock is persistent

       Update Time : Fri Jun  6 02:25:55 2025
             State : clean, degraded
    Active Devices : 1
   Working Devices : 1
    Failed Devices : 0
     Spare Devices : 0

Consistency Policy : resync

              Name : efa0bd3757cf:0
              UUID : 98abe9a9:dbf495f5:5228bd26:9f82af8c
            Events : 3590

    Number   Major   Minor   RaidDevice State
       0     259        7        0      active sync   /dev/md/VrocVolume00_0p4
       -       0        0        1      removed

Did I miss anything in the config.xml for the iso generation that allows me to install the OS on software RAID properly. 

Any help is greatly appreciated! 

Jason

[Marcus Schäfer]

Hi,

> I created an OEM image and installed it to VROC RAID1 disks, which is
> configured at BIOS. I know this is a BIOS/software RAID, so I added
> "mdraid=mirroring" at config.xml.

Ah, there might be a misunderstanding of the mdraid attribute in kiwi.
If you create an image with mdraid configured, it will be a disk image
that itself provides the software raid for you. As we don't know how
many other disks this raid will receive and from where, kiwi can only
create it in degraded mode. The workflow for this use case therefore
is:

- I have a system with n disks and I want to use them in a raid
- I built an image that provides me the software raid feature and
it comes up with just this one disk in degraded mode
- After my image got deployed I add now available disks to my
raid

This is different from your use case because you have a system that
offers raid capabilities in its firmware. The workflow for your use case
therefore is:

- I have a system that supports raid and I want to use it
- I built an image that does NOT use mdraid, because that is provided
by the BIOS. My image however, must be smart enough to detect that
raid system, activate it and provide me a raid device that I can
use as target root device
- After my image got deployed I boot into a system that has root
on a raid device managed by the BIOS.

In order to achieve that I believe the following steps are needed

1. drop mdraid=mirroring from your config.xml

2. Provide a proper /etc/mdadm.conf that matches the requirements of
your BIOS raid array. You can create the file as kiwi overlay file

root/etc/mdadm.conf

3. Make sure etc/mdadm.conf is placed to the initrd. You can achieve this
by a dracut overlay file

root/etc/dracut.conf.d/raid.conf

with the content:

install_items+=" /etc/mdadm.conf "

4. Make sure your root= information matches the name of the raid device.
You can place this information to the kiwi config.xml file as

<type ... kernelcmdline="root=/dev/md0" .../>

And that should be it. btw, I haven't tested the above procedure
and I hope it helps you achieving your goals

Regards,
Marcus
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[Jason Woo]

Thanks for elaborations and suggestions! It's a only two-disk software RAID1 for redundancy purpose.

I'm used to have a hardware RAID which doesn't have any issue with KIWI but trying to save costs this time. 

I just tried another workflow: 

- Leave the disks as JBOD in BIOS (non-raid)

- mdraid=mirroring 

As you mentioned, the system comes up with just one disk in degraded mode; and I have to add another available disk and partition to md0. 

But only nvme4n1p4 and  nvme5n1p4 are in RAID array as below. The /boot and /boot/efi are not in sync in this case. 

nvme5n1     259:0    0 745.2G  0 disk

├─nvme5n1p1 259:4    0     2M  0 part

├─nvme5n1p2 259:5    0    20M  0 part     /boot/efi

├─nvme5n1p3 259:6    0   300M  0 part    /boot

└─nvme5n1p4 259:7    0  15.2G  0 part

     └─md0     9:0    0  15.2G  0 raid1            /

nvme4n1     259:2    0 745.2G  0 disk

├─nvme4n1p1 259:4    0     2M  0 part

├─nvme4n1p2 259:5    0    20M  0 part         

├─nvme4n1p3 259:6    0   300M  0 part       

└─nvme4n1p4 259:7    0  15.2G  0 part

  └─md0     9:0    0  15.2G  0 raid1              /

How could I get a good uuid before installing an OS? I'm researching how to generate a working mdadm.conf that I could use in overlay. 

Jason