Re: Install and RAID
On Mon, Jan 22, 2001 at 05:34:05PM -0600, Steve Greenland wrote:
> Sorry for being slow, but I want to make sure: If I do this (kernel w/o
> RAID support), is the RAID1 partition still accessible w/o any other
> changes (e.g. change partition type with fdisk, changing /etc/fstab,
> etc.)
No. /etc/fstab will reference /dev/mdX devices, which just "are not
there" with a kernel that has no software raid support compiled in.
The corresponding /dev/hdXX devices contain the data, are "mountable"
and work 100%, but if fstab tells the kernel that the /usr filesystem is
to be mounted from /dev/md2, no "raidless" kernel will figure out that
it needs to mount /dev/hda5 instead.
The partition types are irrelevant, a kernel that has no software raid
support compiled in will just ignore them. In fact, AFAIK, the code in
the software raid support that gathers all partitions of type fd
together and figures out which partitions belong together to which raid
device is the *only* place in the kernel where it even *looks* at partition
types.
My opinion: Please make it possible to setup a software raid system and
install debian on it, right from the boot floppies. This would be a
tremendous plus for the useability of debian in "small server"
environments. But please make it optional -- once you wrote the code
that configures the raid partions, it's not hard to ask the user whether
to use it (and consequently use /dev/mdX to install the system on) or
not use it (and continue with /dev/hdXX or /dev/sdXX).
--
Andreas Trottmann <andreas.trottmann@werft22.com>
Reply to: