Re: SATA, RAID, A8N-E, 3800+ help
On Sat, Jan 28, 2006 at 05:34:54PM -0500, Keith Ballantyne wrote:
>
> >For the 31r1a to recognize your network, if it went as in my case, the
> >installer shouldhave proposed you with a list of network modules. You have
> >to choose something call nforether,I believe.
>
> Thanks. the 31r1a installer works with the nForce2 network card 10/100
> driver on my asus a8n-e.
>
> So, I've installed about 6 different ways, utltimately arriving at some
> critical error somewhere along the way.
> I've read most of the faq/helps/howtos and archives that I could find, and
> I still have the same problem.
>
> I want to use RAID0 for the bulk of my file system. I would like to even
> use RAID0 for my boot and swap partitions. I followed the instructions
> outlined at
> http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_software_raid?from=10&comments_per_page=10
> and got further than ever before, but couldn't successfully install either
> GRUB or LILO.
>
> The article above suggests 4 raid partitions
> /boot (50M)
> /swap (1G)
> / (10G)
> /var (the rest)
>
> It is also written specifically for RAID1, though it implies that doing the
> same for RAID0 would work. I'm worried because I'm unsure if the MBR is
> 'striped' in RAID 0, or if the MBR's of each of my 4 drives are exempt.
> Regardless, I've tried it three ways:
>
> case 1: /boot as a specific 50M partition, on the 1st SATA drive (ext3)
Makes sense.
> case 2: /boot as a RAID1 collection of the first 50M worth of all 4 SATA
> drives (ext3).
Raid 1 only does two drives. At least in normal setups. You can stripe
mirrors or mirror stripes of course to make bigger setups.
> case 3: /boot as a RAID0 collection of the first 50M worth of all 4 SATA
> drives (ext3).
> note: In all 3 cases, the remainder of the drive was configured as a
> RAID0 array, and I used LVM (1 volume group) to created two logical
> volumes, a 4G swap volume and the rest (to mount as /).
>
> case 1: allowed me to complete installation, grub appeared to install okay,
> but it doesn't boot, I just get a blank screen.
> case 2: the partitioner seemed to change the partition types, and would
> never let me install GRUB.
Grub works fine if you do raid1 on two partitions. Trying 4 won't work.
Too complex for the boot loader.
> case 3: would never allow GRUB (or LILO) to install on the RAID0 array. It
> kept indicating that status couldn't be reread from /dev/md/0. When I
> rebooted, I would reconstruct the partitions as outlined in case 3 above,
> and the same error would occur.
The boot loaders don't know raid0 as far as I know.
> So, right now I have everything installed except an operational bootloader.
Make /boot a raid1 using a 50M partition on the first two drives.
Install grub to the MBR of both those drives. Or just make it a plain
partition. If you use raid0 at all, reliability is obviously not an
issue for the system overall, and performance for /boot is not an issue
either so a plain single partition on the first drive is fine.
Len Sorensen
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