Re: High Point 370 RAID + Debian
Hi,
> I defined the /dev/ataraid/ devices and was able to use fdisk on them
> but, when i tried to use mke2fs on the linux partition it hangs at:
> writing inodes: 160/366
Are you sure it hangs or is it just a matter of time ?
If I remember correctly it took about 10 minutes for me running mkfs
-j (remember I'm using ext3, which is basically ext2 + journalling) on
2 80 gig drives. There were two times when I thought mkfs stopped
working. One was writing the inodes. I can't remember
the other one - I think it was some part of the journalling data.
What exactly is the size of the partition you are trying to create ?
Try a "small" partition size (about 1 gig) first to see if mke2fs is
working.
> The swap partition works fine( mkswap ran without a hitch ). The
> debian installer still doesnt recognize the raid drive in the normal
> setup.
Are you trying to do a new install or are you just updating ?
As I mentioned before, I'm not sure, if you can use the raid to hold
the root file system and boot from there. I've never tried this
because the kernel can only boot from a ext2 filesystem (as far as I
know) without major modifications.
(btw. did you consider using a journalling filesystem on the raid
drives. Every 21 mounts i.e. starts or after 25 days a fsck is forced.
This may also take a very long time when using large disks. ;-)
What I did, was installing a basic system on a disk, not within the
raid and booting from there.
Then I created a directory called /raid, mounted the raid drive there,
copied the directories I wanted to move to the raid (/usr, /var, /home
- it worked using single user mode). Deleted the original directories
and created symbolic links for /usr to /raid/usr, /var to /raid/var
and /home to /raid/home.
And finally added a line to /etc/fstab like
/dev/ataraid/d0p1 /raid ext? defaults,pri=1
After that, I installed all the other packets with dselect without a
problem.
I think, that's the only way you can do it for now, because
fdisk/cfdisk can't handle raids (again: as far as I know).
A second thought on cfdisk while installing: I'm not sure, if you
already have a second console when the cfdisk screen comes up during
installation, but you can try:
switch to the second console, call cfdisk /dev/ataraid/d0, do the
paritoning there (including write the partition table), then go back
to the installer and may be it will work.
I hope, this helps
Frim
PS. Please excuse me if my explanations are rather lengty or terse. I
don't know, what your level of expertise is.
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