Re: Software RAID in Woody --- General Issues
Hi List,
Thanks nate and Alvin for your helpful advice.
On Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 08:24:43PM -0700, nate wrote:
> depends on the setup. I usually do this where possible. I haven't
> read the HOWTO but it's not the easiest thing to do. I've done it on
> both SCSI and IDE systems. It involved(for me) installing to a different
> disk(not part of the array), once the base system is running and you
> have the raidtools and kernel setup the way you want, make a bootdisk,
> power down, hook the drives your gonna use for raid up in their
> final positions(even if it means moving the current disk to another
> controller/channel), boot up with the floppy by specifying the root
> filesystem on the original disk(not the soon-to-be-raid). configure
> the raid array and create it(I personally use 2.2.19+ raid 0.90 patch).
> switch to single user mode, copy the files over, update lilo and fstab,
> reboot and it should come up..been a few months since I last did it.
I've now read four different (though similar) methods for doing this.
My head is spinning a bit but I think I'll give it a shot :)
> you don't mention what kernel your using or what tools your using.
> I think there are 2 tools. raidtools and raidtools2. raidtools works only
> on 2.2.x kernels, raidtools2 works only on 2.4.x kernels(some 2.3.x too)
> or 2.2.x kernels with a special patch. raidtools2 (aka raid 0.90) supports
> background rebuilding, as well as bootable raid1(not sure if raid 0.36
> aka raidtools supports bootable raid1).
Yeah, sorry. It's a 2.4.18 kernel, i386 hardware, two identical IDE
drives, nothing special. I'm using the raidtools2 package from Woody.
I've since managed to get software RAID-1 working on all partitions
except "/", I think my boot and RAID problems were related more to
shoddy hardware in one of the machines that I'm working on, because
I've had no problems doing the exact same thing on the other one.
> for simplist and most reliable operation use SCSI disks on a supported
> SCSI raid controller(e.g. Mylex Acceleraid). And if nor not sure I
> would probably run some tests so you know how to recover from a failure.
> With raid 0.36 it was easy enough, the partitions were exact mirrors
> of each other, i just had to boot from CD, re-load lilo onto the other
> disk and keep goin. I haven't tested recovery from raid 0.90 but the
> process is probably similar. What is most important to me is not
> maintaining uptime during an outage but having a disk with a good copy
> of the data if the other goes down.
Sadly, budget is a fairly serious issue and I tend to get given the
hardware that our company can get cheaply and easily rather than what
might be best for the purpose. I think I'll persevere with the software
RAID for the time being and perhaps push for some kind of SCSI/hardware
RAID setup when I'm a bit more comfortable with things.
Thanks again for the help.
Regards,
Lucas
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