Root on RAID

[George Karaolides <george@karaolides.com>]

Hi,

I'm trying to install a system with root fs on RAID.

I have done this successfully on Turbolinux 6.1 before, but don't seem to
be able to get it to work under Turbolinux.

Procedure followed (based on the Boot+Root+Raid+Lilo-HOWTO):

- Get and install kernel version 2.2.19 source code (Debian package)
- Patch with appropriate patch from kernel.org (I found out later that 
a Debian package of a raid patch is available in the testing
distribution).
- Make and install a kernel image using make-kpkg.
- Boot with new RAID-aware kernel
- Make RAID arrays with disk on which current installation resides as 
"failed-disk"
- mke2fs on arrays
- Mount arrays under /mnt/raid with the same hierarchy as they will be
mounted in the root-on-RAID system
- Copy filesystems to arrays:
  prompt# tar cf - -C / bin | tar xvf - -C /mnt/raid 
  # tar cf - -C / dev | tar xvf - -C /mnt/raid 
  mkdir /mnt/raid/proc
  etc etc
- Edit /mnt/root/etc/lilo.conf 
- run lilo to install an MBR on one (and later more than one) disks in the
array:
  prompt# chroot /mnt/raid lilo
- Edit /mnt/raid/etc/fstab to reflect root-RAID system fs structure
- Reboot.

This procedure has been completely successful on Turbolinux 6.1, but on
Debian 2.2r3 (potato) I have been unable to boot.

lilo reports successful installation, but on reboot lilo reaches the
error state LI which, according to the LILO doc, indicates a geometry
mismatch.

Contents of /mnt/root/etc/lilo.conf follow.  This was done according to 
the above HOWTO.

/dev/md0 contains the /boot filesystem.
/dev/md2 contains the / (root) filesystem.

# Begin lilo.conf

disk=/dev/md2
bios=0x80
cylinders=8761
heads=64
sectors=32
partition=/dev/md0
start=32 

map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
lba32
prompt
root=/dev/md2
default=linux

image=/boot/vmlinuz
        label=linux
        read-only

image=/boot/vmlinuz.old
        label=linux-old
        read-only

# End lilo.conf

Help would be greatly appreciated...

Best regards,

George Karaolides       8, Costakis Pantelides St.,
tel:   +35 79 68 08 86                   Strovolos, 
email: george@karaolides.com       Nicosia CY 2057,
web:   www.karaolides.com      Republic  of Cyprus