Does anyone have software RAID 1 mirroring of / set up on Sparc?

["Ashley Hooper" <Ashley.Hooper@FFastFill.com>]

Hi all,

I've been struggling with this for the last few days but no matter what I do I cannot get a mirrored root filesystem on my V240.  Generally what happens is that SILO refuses to boot from the partition as soon as it's changed to type 'fd' (RAID autodetect).  Other times it starts to boot but only gets as far as single user mode and then cannot mount root properly.

The way I've been working is like this:

1.  install Debian to /dev/sda:

      /dev/sda1 - 3 GB swap
      /dev/sda2 - 10 GB root
      /dev/sda4 - 20 GB /var
      /dev/sda5 - 15 GB /home

      /dev/sda3 becomes the Sparc 'all disk' partition.
      NB I also tried a separate /boot partition but that didn't work either.

2.  download and compile the 2.6.16.1 kernel, compiling in general RAID support, RAID1, and all required filesystems and storage drivers.

3.  partition /dev/sdb as per /dev/sda.

4.  create mirrors for each partition on /dev/sdb but putting the first member as 'missing':

    i.e. mdadm --create /dev/md0 --auto --verbose --level=1 --raid-devices=2 missing /dev/sda2

5.  make filesystems for each partition and copy the data:

    i.e. mkfs.ext3 /dev/md0 
         mount /dev/md0 /mnt
         cp -dpRx / /mnt

6.  fdisk and set partition types of RAID partitions on /dev/sdb to type 'fd' (Linux RAID autodetect)

7.  update /etc/fstab to point to the new md devices.

8.  reboot - everything's ok at this point and mount tells me that we are using the md devices.  This leads me to believe that we are now using the md devices on /dev/sdb.

9.  then I try to add the partitions on /dev/sda to the md devices:

     i.e. mdadm --add /dev/md0 /dev/sda2

    ...but it fails, telling me the resource is busy.  I believe this is because SILO still references /dev/sda2 and so the system is still actually mounting /dev/sda2 as root partition in spite of what /etc/fstab says.

10.  now I edit silo.conf and add the following to the kernel entry for the kernel I'm trying to boot
  
    partition=/dev/md0
    append="md=0,/dev/sda2,/dev/sdb2"

11.  usually at this point SILO will refuse to even bring up the boot prompt.

12.  I reboot using the Debian CD and change silo.conf to use /dev/sdb2 directly (instead of as a metadevice).

13.  reboot again and then encounter a kernel panic when trying to pivot root.


I would love to hear if anyone else has guidelines on how to set this up.  Can anyone confirm that SILO can actually boot from a device that has partition type of 'fd' (Linux RAID Autodetect)?

Is my silo.conf syntax correct?

Or does anyone know of a Linux LiveCD distro for Sparc that I could use to set up the mirrors before starting the Debian install?

Thanks
Ashley

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