RE: Partitioning a Web Server
um....compaq dl320s for 1 wont do it. Look at some bioses, i would be
pleased if you could point me at some machines that can, ive not found one
yet. Maybe you should actually try it? have you? so far Ive not found a box
that can boot off a different hd reliably if at all, Ive spent time on this
as ide disks are obviosly cheaper than scsi, my conclusion was dont do it.
Have you tested this on the Dell? sounds scsi, might be possible if the
second device which was sdb now becomes sda, my original comments were
aimaed at ide.
Of the two machines with bioses that allowed alternative devices it would
not boot. It would take alterations to grub or lilo, from a maintenance
point of view its a non-starter.
re, setting up lilo, this means on your 2 disks there is a seperate mbr
setup etc...never seen a doc on this, if we are talking doing it each time
we update the kernel its beginning to get messy and time consuming, its
certainly not standard as far as I am aware. A hardware raid card is a way
more reliable solution as its simpler.
As for testing the /var issue you suggest, I would need to come up with a
test that covers all eventualities, rather difficult to guarantee, way
better to assume the worst and plan accordingly.
regards
Steven
-----Original Message-----
From: Russell Coker [mailto:russell@coker.com.au]
Sent: Friday, 4 April 2003 11:12
To: Jones, Steven
Cc: debian-isp@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Partitioning a Web Server
On Fri, 4 Apr 2003 07:00, Jones, Steven wrote:
> You cant normally boot off software raid if the primary disk fails on
> Intel.
Sure you can. Modern BIOSs have options for booting from a secondary disk.
If you setup LILO correctly then the most you should have to do is
reconfigure the BIOS to use a different disk.
Also if you have hot-swap hardware (say an entry level Dell 1650 PowerEdge
server) then you can just unplug the failed disk and it'll boot from the
remaining disk.
One advantage of software RAID is the control you get over it. With
hardware
RAID you are often left wondering what the REAL status of your RAID device
is, sometimes the communications between the RAID hardware and the OS fails
and the OS thinks that it's all fine while it's really not (or the other way
around). I've seen both on Solaris.
> Its quite possible to fill /var and lock a server up to the point access
is
> not possible. Now I have to admit I have only seen this on Solaris, I
Solaris is buggy then. Not a problem for Linux users.
> assume its just as possible on Linux.
Don't assume, do a test. Bad assumptions are the cause of much lost time,
money, and data.
--
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