Re: Problems installing BRUB with RAID5

Damon L. Chesser wrote:
Scott Lair wrote:
Damon L. Chesser wrote:

Damon L. Chesser wrote:

Chris Willard wrote:

Hi All,

I have a pc with 3x40GB IDE drives.

I have 2 RAID 5 devices setup-

/dev/md0 = 3 x 38GB as /
/dev/md1 = 3 x 2GB as SWAP

Debian base installs OK but when I get to the Grub installation I get a
"Fatal Error" message.

I am telling Grub to install on /dev/md0 but it won't install.

Any tips would be appreciated.

Regards,

Chris




Chris,

AFAIK, grub can only be set up on a raid0 or a raid1 device. So far,
I can not document this, but I seem to recall that fact. As others
said, you need to install grub on REAL devices. You can see
www.damtek.com for a (I hope rather thorough) walk through on how to
set up grub on a raid.


Just adding more info on the on the raid0 and raid1 and grub. I have
just remembered where I got that info from. RHEL-4 will only let you
select raid0 or raid1 for the /boot partition, or for / if /boot is not
a separate partition during install. I suspect this is a RHEL issue and
not a grub issue, but truly, I don't know. I just did not want to be
putting out bad info, so I thought I would expand on why I thought only
raid0 and raid1 would work for grub.

Since I can't find any documentation on the limits of raid and grub, I
suspect you can run raid5. Anybody willing to confirm this for me?

--
Damon L. Chesser
damon@xxxxxxxxxx
damon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx



My experience with raid5 was that grub cannot be installed on it.
I had to setup grub on each drive in my mirror separatel. I ended up
setting up
a small /boot then setting up grub on each disk in the mirror. If I recall
correctly, grub was installed on /dev/hda only, so I ran setup on /dev/hdb
etc...

just from my own experience, I'm no expert.

scott lair



Scott,

Thanks for the reply, I obviously am no expert either. I know you have
to manually set up grub on each HD on a raid0 and a raid1. My question
is, is the limit of only raid0 or raid1 for /boot (assuming separate
partitions) a function of the RHEL install process, or is it a limit in
grub it's self?

I know this is not a RHEL user list, but this is a grub question, since
I can't seem to locate any documentation on grub and raid limits and I
gave advise to the OP, thought I would have it confirmed or not.

--
Damon L. Chesser
damon@xxxxxxxxxx
damon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx


From what I have seen grub is the limiting factor. It does not
"understand" raid5 disks.

scott lair


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