Lucas Barbuto said: > Hi List, > 1) Question: Is it important to have my boot partition (also my root > partition, I don't have a seperate /boot) as part of an array? If I want > this array for redundancy, I would have thought this was > essential, but it looks like quite a difficult process. Is it worth the > hassle of following the instructions in the HOWTO (which I find a bit > confusing and haved managed to botch up once already)? Is there another > option for a fully redundant system? If I just RAID my non-root > partitions, is this still fairly safe?
depends on the setup. I usually do this where possible. I haven't read the HOWTO but it's not the easiest thing to do. I've done it on both SCSI and IDE systems. It involved(for me) installing to a different disk(not part of the array), once the base system is running and you have the raidtools and kernel setup the way you want, make a bootdisk, power down, hook the drives your gonna use for raid up in their final positions(even if it means moving the current disk to another controller/channel), boot up with the floppy by specifying the root filesystem on the original disk(not the soon-to-be-raid). configure the raid array and create it(I personally use 2.2.19+ raid 0.90 patch). switch to single user mode, copy the files over, update lilo and fstab, reboot and it should come up..been a few months since I last did it. > 2) Problem: I managed to get Software RAID working to an extent when > I compiled all the RAID kernel components as modules (at least I was able > to execute the 'mkraid' command to start constructing the array on the > /home partition) but it's stopped working since I compiled > support directly into the kernel. This could just be me doing something > stupid, but I've checked my kernel configuration twice. you don't mention what kernel your using or what tools your using. I think there are 2 tools. raidtools and raidtools2. raidtools works only on 2.2.x kernels, raidtools2 works only on 2.4.x kernels(some 2.3.x too) or 2.2.x kernels with a special patch. raidtools2 (aka raid 0.90) supports background rebuilding, as well as bootable raid1(not sure if raid 0.36 aka raidtools supports bootable raid1). > Any other RAID advice anyone can offer (redundancy related) is also much > appreciated, as I'm a bit of a RAID-newbie. for simplist and most reliable operation use SCSI disks on a supported SCSI raid controller(e.g. Mylex Acceleraid). And if nor not sure I would probably run some tests so you know how to recover from a failure. With raid 0.36 it was easy enough, the partitions were exact mirrors of each other, i just had to boot from CD, re-load lilo onto the other disk and keep goin. I haven't tested recovery from raid 0.90 but the process is probably similar. What is most important to me is not maintaining uptime during an outage but having a disk with a good copy of the data if the other goes down. I was lucky enough to find a kickass deal on Mylex Acceleraid 150s at a site called compgeeks.com, the cards retail for around $250 I picked up 2 for $40/ea. they look brand new or refurb maybe, 4MB cache, single channel ultra 2 scsi, have had one of them driving 5x9.1GB disks in my redhat box for the past 2 months or so without any trouble(except grub doesn't like it). I've been lookin on their site to see if that product comes back in stock..sofar haven't seen a trace. glad I got em when I did!! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
