Re: Moving a boot partition to a more stable format

[James Allsopp <jamesaallsopp@googlemail.com>]

Hi,
I sent the below message a couple of days ago, but now I think the
answer is simple,

i.) Copy the files off boot,
ii.) Turn sda1 and sdb1 into a RAID1 array
iii.) Copy the files back
iv.) Reinstall grub on both the hard drives,

Does this sound about right? I presume I'll have remove all of the
UUID's from the menu.lst

Thanks
James


Hi,
I built a debian server a while ago, with all of the main partitions
across an LVM volume, which is then mirrored across two drives using
kernel RAID1. I left swap out and effectively stripe them by setting
their priority to 1 in /etc/fstab. However the boot partition still only
exists on one of the disks (/dev/sda1). I would like to mirror that as
well so if either drive goes down, the system can boot regardless. I
distantly remember being warned off creating them as a RAID1, but can't
remember the exact reason. How's the best way of achieving want I want
and does anyone have any good up-to-date instructions? I've cut and
pasted the file list at the bottom,

On a side note, if I remove one of the disks from a raid 1
configuration, if I then mount the partitions, are they safely readable
as with any ordinary ext3 partition for instance?

Thanks for any help,
James

Hawaiian:/home/ja# fdisk -l /dev/sd[ab]

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000203804160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf229fe3e

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          37      297171   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              38         524     3911827+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3             525      121601   972551002+  fd  Linux raid
autodetect

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000203804160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00049c5c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1          37      297171   83  Linux
/dev/sdb2              38         524     3911827+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3             525      121601   972551002+  fd  Linux raid
autodetect