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After much Googling and troubleshooting I've given up.

I've got Debian 12 running on an old HP Micro 8. LVM is configured:

sda                            8:0    0   1.8T  0 disk
`-sda1                         8:1    0   1.8T  0 part
  `-md127                      9:127  0   1.8T  0 raid1
    |-md127p1                259:0    0   1.8T  0 part
    | `-VolumeGroup1-Volume1 253:0    0   4.5T  0 lvm   /
    |-md127p2                259:1    0     1K  0 part
    `-md127p5                259:2    0 976.9M  0 part
      `-VolumeGroup1-Volume1 253:0    0   4.5T  0 lvm   /
sdb                            8:16   0   2.7T  0 disk
`-sdb1                         8:17   0   2.7T  0 part
  `-md126                      9:126  0   2.7T  0 raid1
    `-VolumeGroup1-Volume1   253:0    0   4.5T  0 lvm   /
sdc                            8:32   0   2.7T  0 disk
`-sdc1                         8:33   0   2.7T  0 part
  `-md126                      9:126  0   2.7T  0 raid1
    `-VolumeGroup1-Volume1   253:0    0   4.5T  0 lvm   /
sdd  (Debian live USB)                          8:48   1   239G  0 disk
`-sdd1                         8:49   1   239G  0 part
sde                            8:64   0   1.8T  0 disk
`-sde1                         8:65   0   1.8T  0 part
  `-md127                      9:127  0   1.8T  0 raid1
    |-md127p1                259:0    0   1.8T  0 part
    | `-VolumeGroup1-Volume1 253:0    0   4.5T  0 lvm   /
    |-md127p2                259:1    0     1K  0 part
    `-md127p5                259:2    0 976.9M  0 part
      `-VolumeGroup1-Volume1 253:0    0   4.5T  0 lvm   /

On boot using the 6.1.0-31-amd64 kernel, I'm getting the error Kernel Panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0). I've typically fixed this in the past by running update-initramfs -u -k 6.1.0-31-amd64. This command produces the error Error: unknown LVM metadata header, grub-update is the same and grub does not get updated.

Booting to a different kernel e.g. 6.1.0-21-amd64 gets me further, but then I'm booted into a read only file system. I can't find the systemd errors because journalctl -xb can't find the last boot.

I've chrooted from a Debian live usb, mounted my LVM, sys, proc, dev, pts. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling different kernels with no luck.

I've reinstalled grub-efi with no luck either. Grub-install also produces the LVM metadata error. On this, /boot/efi is empty. I can't seem to figure out why.

Can anyone shed any light on what I can try next? Where can I look to fix the LVM metadata header error? Please let me know if any further info is required and I'll update the question.

edit 1 - ls -lah /boot (comment request)

root@debian:/# ls -lah /boot
total 50M
drwxr-xr-x 4  root root 4.0K Mar 7 22:43 .
drwxr-xr-x 20 root root 4.0K Mar 7 22:54 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1  root root   83 May 3 2024 System.map-6.1.0-21-amd64
-rw-r--r-- 1  root root 254K May 3 2024 config-6.1.0-21-amd64
drwxr-xr-x 2  root root 4.0K Mar 7 21:54 efi
drwxr-xr-x 5  root root 4.0K Mar 7 22:42 grub
-rw-r--r-- 1  root root  42M Mar 7 22:43 initrd.img-6.1.0-21-amd64
-rw-r--r-- 1  root root 7.8M May 3 2024 vmlinuz-6.1.0-21-amd64
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  • Consider the possibility of an imminent drive failure and act accordingly. Commented Mar 7 at 22:32
  • Also are all the parts of VolumeGroup1-Volume1 formatted as the same File type. /boot/efi is empty because grub never finishes installing the .efi files and the kernel needs those .efi files to boot . Does ls -al /boot shoow your kernel and ramdisk as files? Commented Mar 8 at 0:20
  • @ChanganAuto SMART tests (short) for all 4 drives returned no errors. Offline tests are running now. Thanks for the heads up. Commented Mar 8 at 0:51
  • I had similar problems using GPT partition table and had to revert back to MBR (like you on an old system). Maybe can you can convert using superuser.com/a/1252393/169658 (after data backup of course) Commented Mar 8 at 13:06

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