Re: RAID

[John Jason Jordan <johnxj@comcast.net>]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 21:00:15 -0400
Douglas Allan Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca> dijo:

> > I have installed Etch amd64 on a new computer that I just built. Its
> > ultimate purpose is to serve as storage for backups from my other two
> > computers, plus to be a way to get on the net when I goober up my Linux
> > laptop, which is unfortunately a fairly frequent occurrence. The
> > motherboard has onboard RAID 0 and RAID 1 capability, but all my Linux
> > friends told me to use Linux software RAID instead, which is what I
> > did. Each drive has a 2 GB swap partition and a 50 GB Etch partition,
> > assembled as md0 and md1. I wish to use the rest of each disk (250 GB)
> > for storage of backups, also as RAID 1.
> > 
> > I thought I could do this from within Etch, but gparted doesn't grok
> > RAID-anything. Just now I tried mdadm and it turns out that it is
> > command line only -- scary for a newbie like me! I can use gparted to
> > create the ext3 partitions, but since it can't handle RAID, do I have
> > to use mdadm to assemble them? Or is there a better tool?

> The onboard supposed hardware raid is really a bios program that sets up
> windows software raid.  its called fake raid.  Use linux md.

That corroborates what I have heard from just about everyone else.

> The etch installer will set up software raid.  Use manual partitioning
> and read the installation manual.  To further make life sweet you can
> put LVM over top of the raid array.
> 
> The trick in the installer is instead of telling it to format a
> partition, you have to tell it to use the partition for software raid.
> After that, there's a new menu choise: setup software raid.

Yes, already know how to do it with the installer. As I said, I have
installed Etch on a RAID 1 partition, and I also created a 2 GB RAID 1
partition for swap. I created them when I installed Etch and they are
working fine with Etch.

What I want to do now is create one more RAID 1 partition, using the
rest of the disk. From what you say, and the silence of others, there
is no way to do this from within Etch. Evidently I'll have to use the
installer to create the new RAID 1 partition, then abort the
installation. Except I can't remember if there's an Abort option after
partitioning -- doesn't it just automatically go on to install Etch? I
don't want to install Etch on the new partition because it will hose my
Grub boot menu and I won't be able to boot my existing Etch.

Maybe there is a live CD from another 64-bit distro that I could use to
create the new partition. Etch is not live, and the regular live CD for
Ubuntu can't do RAID -- you have to use their Alternate CD, and it is
not live. I sure wish Gparted could do it; it would make live a lot
easier and less scary.