[03:45] <TheProf> Hello.  I am having some difficulty getting Ubuntu Server 24.04 to install on my machine with the drives in Linux RAID configuration, and I am looking for help please.  I followed several guides online to set up the RAID during installation, and the installation ends with a 'successfully installed' message, but upon reboot the BIOS reports No Bootable Media Found.  I've reinstalled three times and 
[03:45] <TheProf> get the same error.  How can I determine the issue and solve this please?
[03:58] <blahdeblah> TheProf: What disk layout did you use?  Can you link to the guide which most closely matches what you did?
[04:04] <TheProf> @blahdeblah, hello.  I can describe my layout and link the guide sure.  Server has 8x1TB drives.  So I set / as RAID1 on two drives, and /home on RAID5 on 4 drives, with 2 hot spares.  Let me try to find the guide I used
[04:06] <TheProf> Here is the link: https://tonyfernandeztech.wordpress.com/2021/04/27/installing-ubuntu-20-04-with-software-raid-1/  One change I made was not to include /boot within the RAID1 as I had seen it doesn't work as /boot is needed before the RAID is mounted so I kept /boot outside
[04:07] <patdk-lap> hmm, bios wont understand raid, though these days you should be using uefi
[04:08] <patdk-lap> that guide is not using uefi, not pretty
[04:09] <TheProf> I'm using an older server and I'm not familiar with UEFI at all.
[04:10] <patdk-lap> I had to change to uefi with 22.04, but forget if it was cause of 22.04, or something else I was doing
[04:10] <patdk-lap> oh, I think it was my motherboard wouldn't boot from my m.2 unless I used uefi
[04:10] <patdk-lap> unless your server is >10years old, it likely does uefi
[04:11] <patdk-lap> but that is kindof a different thing, but becoming more and more required though
[04:12] <TheProf> @patdk-lap, it is around 11 or so years old and was donated to the school
[04:18] <TheProf> The machine has a hardware RAID controller, but when I try to use hardware raid to create the drives, the Ubuntu server installer doesn't see any drives whatsoever.  And using software raid doesn't seem to work so I am stuck.
[04:26] <TheProf> If it is better to just wipe and reinstall I can do that, but what is the correct way to install for software RAID during installation?  Do I need to have /boot outside the RAID?
[04:27] <patdk-lap> I always put /boot on raid1
[04:29] <TheProf> @patdk-lap, OK so during installation when I go to custom / manual storage configuration, what do you do next?  Do you specify /boot on the raid in a certain way?
[04:30] <patdk-lap> only if the system is so old it can only boot on drives smaller than 4gig or 8gig or something
[04:30] <patdk-lap> otherwise, I dont bother making /boot it's own raid1
[04:31] <TheProf> OK - can I just tell the installer to set up RAID1 and put / on it and it will also include /boot by itself?
[04:32] <patdk-lap> yes
[04:33] <TheProf> OK so I can ignore what that guide is saying then?  I don't need to specify a separate partition for /boot and SWAP?
[04:34] <patdk-lap> well, swap depends
[04:34] <patdk-lap> I dont like using swap files, so I use a seperate partition for swap
[04:34] <TheProf> The server has 40 GB of RAM so I feel it isn't needed?
[04:34] <patdk-lap> but do whatever you want, dont matter
[04:35] <patdk-lap> dunno, if 40gig is enough for you
[04:35] <TheProf> Oh yes.  The previous server which ran for years had 16 GB and never went to swap
[04:35] <patdk-lap> I'm eating 40gigs of swap with 160gigs ram :(
[04:35] <patdk-lap> no idea why it is even using swap, it doesn't run anything
[04:37] <TheProf> I'll give this a try now as I've been ripping out my hair for three days trying to get anything to install on it.
[04:37] <patdk-lap> the only HARD part to set that all up, is grub
[04:38] <TheProf> Is grub able to be in the RAID as well?
[04:38] <patdk-lap> no
[04:38] <patdk-lap> you need to set it up on each drive
[04:38] <patdk-lap> and everytime grub updates, make sure it updates each drive
[04:38] <TheProf> OK so that's probably what is happening here.
[04:43] <TheProf> Do I need to set up grub on the drives which are part of the /home RAID5, or only the / RAID1 which I'm going to mark as boot devices? 
[04:50] <patdk-lap> grub needs to be setup on any drive you want to boot from in the bios
[04:51] <TheProf> OK
[05:24] <TheProf> OK so this is weird.  I think I figured out what was happening with the raid controller.  I checked just to make sure and the controller in the server is an PERC H310, which is specifically listed as supported by Ubuntu server OS.  But every time I tried it, the installer would hang during boot with all these weird errors.  So I finally figured it out.  The issue is the global hot spares.  Ubuntu 
[05:24] <TheProf> server installer will crash if global spares are set in the controller.  I didn't set them this time and everything worked perfectly.  
[05:27] <TheProf> Not sure why setting the extra drives as global spares causes the installer to crash but when I didn't, it worked great.  Maybe I can set them as spares after the installation is complete.
[05:30] <TheProf> I don't understand the error but during the installer boot-up it would repeat something along the lines of 'dmar rma read no_pasid request device PTR read access is not set', for what it is worth.