Hello debian community,
first of all a big 'Thank You' for all the people involved with debian,
for all the great non profit work they do!
I'm not completely new to debian, but I think far away from an
experienced user.
The new debian comes in really handy as right now I need to install
several linux servers for a customer.
Yes, however... my goal was to install sarge stable with a configuration
like this:
Dual Intel MMX 466
512 MB RAM
2 IDE drives configured with RAID 1.
Those Managed by LVM.
This is my first try on linux software raid and also the first time I
use the logical volume manager.
So I started booting with 'expert26' to create partitioning like this:
1: create partitions (lets say only 1 to keep it easy) of equal size on
each IDE drive.
2: configure those partitions to be used by RAID.
3: create the 'md' device(s).
4: configure those devices to be used by LVM.
5: create a Volume Group.
6: create a logical volume structure (to be mapped to the linux filesystem)
7: create the partitions for '/' '/usr' etc... on the logical volumes.
All works out well to this point.
As stated, this is my first try on software raid and lvm, so please tell
me if I have any 'logical' errors in my procedure.
Also until now I never had problems using LILO or GRUB, because setups I
used before where more common.
Now all that seems to be missing is a drive marked as active, to hold
the boot loader.
The 'partman' menu only allows the raid device (i.e /dev/md0) to be
marked with the boot flag.
I asume this is correct for LILO? Is this the same for GRUB, or does
GRUB require a different configuration?
Well, I continue with installation, and write partitions to disk.
Now the option to use GRUB in debian installer is gone, only LILO is
left for choice in the menu.
Ok, I would prefere GRUB, but lets give it a try...
Debian installer tries to install LILO and fails.
It alerts about failure activating the raid device /dev/md0.
If I did choose 'Install Grub' from debian-installer menu, before
partitioning the disks, it opens partman and when choosing finish
installation after partitioning, installer tries to install grub into
hd0, which fails. The option is given to provide another target, but I'm
unsure what would be the alternatives to hd0, /dev/mapper/vg0-vl1 ?
What also confuses me are the warnings I get about the kernel not able
to read /dev/md0 (invalid argument), /dev/bus..anything which it cant
read config from, device busy warnings when restarting partman,and
kernel not aware of config until reboot warnings.
Now if I reboot and restart setup in hope it would be able to read
partition config after reboot, I get disappointet, because partman does
not remember the RAID, nor the LVM config.
I need to reinitialize the RAID, which works well, but as soon I start
over with LVM, it again beclaims that kernel would not be able to know
about config until reboot.
What's this errors / warnings about? Should I ignore them and continue,
as any other choice does not seem to be reasonable???
Of course I searched the net and these lists for information.
Actually I could not find anything, that would help me newbie to get it
working within the debian installer.
This looks for me to be close to my problem:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/11/msg01316.html
I found this, which looks like a way to do it without the installer:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2004/07/msg01195.html
Would that be a valid and current way to reach my goal, if the
functionallity I want is not provided by debian-installer?
Please someone enlighten me and tell me how to achieve my desired setup.
Do I have a logical error? Or, did i miss some info?
What would be the steps to do what I want in debian-installer?
If there's no way... which would be the tasks to do on a new debian sarge?
This already takes me two days of trial & error and reading lots of docs
(as it's always), but I'm at the point, where help from more experienced
users would be needed lots.
Thank you for helping me out!
Mart
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