Arch Linux

Description:

There are 2 SSDs, one being 256GB (M.2) and another 1TB (SATA). 512MB partitions are present on both as EFI System partitions, formatted as FAT32. The remainder space on both disks is used to create 2 physical partitions (one on each disk), of LVM type. These are used to create a single Volume Group (VolGroup00). Logical volumes labelled 'lvroot', 'lvhome', 'lvswap00', 'lvswap01', 'lvvdi' are created on the volume group.

Importantly, the LV labelled 'lvroot' is created with type raid1 i.e. the 'lvroot' is RAID1 across the 2 underlying physical volumes. The root filesystem (/) is mounted at 'lvroot' and /boot also resides on 'lvroot'. '/boot/efi' is mounted at the 512MB partition on the 256GB (M.2) SSD holding the efistub.

The installed kernels are the official packages viz. 'linux-lts', 'linux' and 'linux-zen'. At the time of first installation of Arch Linux, the 'linux' package was installed, however, later, when 'linux' was not bootable after a kernel upgrade, 'linux-zen' was installed additionally and used (successfully) as default.

Later still, even 'linux-zen' became unbootable after an upgrade; whereupon 'linux-lts' was installed and which booted successfully and still boots successfully.

The error message when trying to boot linux 4.8.4-1 (and also linux-zen 4.8.4-1), reads as following:
[ 16.564842] device-mapper: table: 254:7: raid: Unable to assemble array: Unknown flag(s) in compatible feature flags
[ 17.552902] device-mapper: table: 254:8: raid: Unable to assemble array: Unknown flag(s) in compatible feature flags



Additional info:

grub-install --version
grub-install (GRUB) 2.02~beta3

mkinitcpio --version
mkinitcpio 21

sudo lvm version
LVM version: 2.02.166(2) (2016-09-26)
Library version: 1.02.135 (2016-09-26)
Driver version: 4.34.0

Kernels:-
linux 4.8.4-1
linux-zen 4.8.4-1
linux-lts 4.4.28-1


Output of 'lsblk', 'pvdisplay', 'lvdisplay', 'lvdisplay -m' and '/etc/fstab' are here:

lsblk --> https://ptpb.pw/SScm

pvdisplay --> https://ptpb.pw/eF0z

lvdisplay --> https://ptpb.pw/O9FV

lvdisplay -m --> https://ptpb.pw/5bve

/etc/fstab --> https://ptpb.pw/DPo7


Configuration files for 'GRUB', mkinitcpio' and '/etc/lvm/lvm.conf' are here:

/etc/default/grub --> https://ptpb.pw/EV6n

/boot/grub/grub.cfg --> https://ptpb.pw/kFLb

/etc/mkinitcpio.conf --> https://ptpb.pw/n5Hf

/etc/lvm/lvm.conf --> https://ptpb.pw/mz2p


Output of 'lsinitcpio' for the installed kernels 'linux-lts', 'linux' and 'linux-zen' (all officially supported).

lsinitcpio -a -v /boot/initramfs-linux-lts.img --> https://ptpb.pw/KqJq

lsinitcpio -a -v /boot/initramfs-linux.img --> https://ptpb.pw/kSSL

lsinitcpio -a -v /boot/initramfs-linux-zen.img --> https://ptpb.pw/2nPN


Output of dmesg when attempting to boot linux-zen with 'debug' passed as parameter to grub at time of booting:

dmesg-debug-Linux-4.8.4-1-zen --> https://ptpb.pw/mMPD



Steps to reproduce:

Potentially, the bug report filed at " https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1631298 " is dealing with the same issue.