Re: md (software) RAID missing in the installer for sparc
On Tue, Apr 17, 2007 at 12:56:21AM +0100, Chris Newport wrote:
> 2) Older OBPs cannot see beyond either 1Gb or 2Gb into a partition
> depending on version. If your installer puts anything needed for
> the initial boot process beyond this point you will not be able
> to boot. [ Affects Sparc32 ]
I've got a sun4u, so this shouldn't affect me...
> 3) The first cylinder of the disk contains the partition information.
> Most filesystems work around this by not actually using the first
> cylinder, but Linux Raid does not understand this and it will
> overwrite the tables. The solution is simple - just create a small
> partition of one cylinder at cylinder zero and do not use it.
> [ Affects Linux Raid and possibly oddball filesystems such as XFS
> only when they start at cylinder zero ]
I can't quite reproduce this - my current /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1, both of
which start at the first cylinder, are in a RAID array, but work fine.
> 4) If the partition table on the disk was first written by an old
> version of the Solaris format command the maximum useable size of
> any partition will be either 1Gb or 2Gb depending on version.
> Linux will probably not notice and allow you to create a larger
> partition which will confuse the OBP even if the OBP does not have
> the limitation in 2) above.
> The workaround for this is to destroy cylinder zero by filling it
> with zeros using dd and then use Linux fdisk to create a new BSD
> table. [ Affects disks initially formatted with old utilities ]
I had Solaris on it previously, but I only had Linux parted and fdisk
trample over it several times, I never filled it with zeros. Is that really
necessary? :)
--
2. That which causes joy or happiness.
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