RE: Possible convert to Debian
> 5. I am interested in software RAID 1 and have 2 identical
> HDDs. Is there
> an option during the install from Debian CDs (didn't see it
> in the Knoppix
> HD install) to setup RAID? If not, any recs on the easiest
> way to get RAID
> 1 going after the initial installation?
As this seems to be the only question left untouched, I'll give it a whirl.
There is no option for raid at install time that I am aware of, though I
haven't tried the new installer. I'll have to set my partition types to
RAID from the installer partitioner and see if it'll play nice :).
First, of course, I'd recommend the RAID-HOWTO. And when it suggests you
compile your own kernel with RAID-1 compiled in, I would do as it says. The
kernel will automatically detect the raid partitions at boot time without
having to worry with setting up the initrrd to preload the raid modules
before booting the rest of the system. Of course if you are not mirroring
your root (/) partition, you won't have to worry about that, and you can
just follow the basics in the HOWTO.
There are two tools for managing raids: raidtools2 and mdadm. IIRC, the
HOWTO mostly discusses raidtools, but does mention mdadm. Personally, I
settled on mdadm for its ease of scripting.
In a nutshell, if you ARE using initrd and mirroring your root partition,
you'll have to preform the following:
1. Create identical partitions on each disk and set the type to Linus Raid
Autodetect (Type:fd)
2. Create the filesystems on the 2nd disk and copy all the data over.
3. Create an /etc/fstab appropriate for RAID (i.e. /dev/md1) on the 2nd
disk.
4. Create a proper lilo.conf on the 2nd disk. (I used
raid-extra-boot=/dev/sda,/dev/sdb)
5. Create an initrd image (mkinitrd).
I used mdadm -Db /dev/md? >> /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf to create a conf file
to be used in the initrd.
I put /dev/sda1, /dev/sdb1, /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf in /etc/mkinitrd/files.
And I made sure "/dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1" was appended to line in
${INITRDDIR}/script
Finally I ran mkinitrd -k -r /dev/md1 -o /mnt/boot/initrd.img-md
6. lilo -r /mnt (where I had my 2nd disks root partition mounted)
At this point I rebooted. This put me running on the 2nd disk which was a
degraded RAID-1. I added the 1st disk by: mdadm -a /dev/md1 /dev/sda1
Finally, I rebuilt the initrd and reran lilo:
mkinitrd -k -r /dev/md1 -o /boot/initrd.img-md
lilo
>From there I watched the partitions resynch by looking at /proc/mdstat
NOTE: I did upgrade lilo to 22.5.8. The version in stable didn't seem to
play nice with the raid-extra-boot option. However, it did seem to work with
`lilo -b /dev/sda; lilo -b /dev/sdb` IFF I waited for the drives to
completely resynch before issueing the mkinitrd/lilo combination at the end.
Also NOTE, that some tools expect to find a raidtools style config file and
associated tools. Mondo rescue seems to be one of these, though I haven't
looked too deeply into it.
This is just an overview/summary of what I did there was a LOT of reading
and trial and error that went on before I got it working (of course I do
tend to be stubbborn and try the least likely to work option first for the
sake of proving that it won't work that way). I actually wrote scripts to
automate all this. Pehaps later today I'll try to dig them up and post.
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