Re: [opensuse] Help with Raid on 10.3

Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:
On 12/02/2007 03:32 PM, Jim Flanagan wrote:

Greetings all,

I'm trying to do a new install of opensuse 10.3 on a new server box. I'd
like to have raid1 (mirror) set up with 2 drives. I don't know the full
differences between md raid and dm raid, but I followed the instructions
on installing md raid on the opensuse wiki, using yast to set up the
raid partitions. The problem is the system won't boot on the first
reboot after install. I originally set all partitions to be extended
(not primary) which didn't boot. So I started over from scratch and set
/boot as primary partition with all others, swap, /, /home, etc as
extended, but it still won't boot. At this point I had enabled raid in
the bios for both sata controllers, but not set up the raid volume in
the motherboard raid controller.

Switching gears I then tried setting up the dm raid in the bios and yast
saw that as an nvidia_sometingorother and I believe that would have
installed and booted, but I'm unsure whether or not I should use the dm
raid or if the md raid is preferable.


Mine did work, but I have had a fair bit of experience with md raid.
First, you mentioned you had a separate boot partition. Is that also a
part of your raid1? Since grub does not understand md raid yet, it
needs to boot from the MBR of one of the drives. Obviously, the generic
MBR (which boots the active partition) will not work with md raid, but
that is the default. During install, you need to change where grub is
installed, putting it in the MBR. On mine, my /boot is on my raid1
root. This is noted in grub's menu.lst. Grub finds the /boot/grub
directory initially via one of the drives, i.e. sda5. It then loads
stage 1.5, and the raid1 modules have to be a part of the initrd for it
to find and use the raid1. When I upgraded our office server, I did
change the defaults for grub, but it had no problems finding the raid1
root or boot, and installed quite smoothly, so it does work. Just
remember, the default is a generic boot loader in the MBR, and grub is
NOT installed in the MBR. Since if boot is on raid, that partition
cannot be made active, so it cannot boot that way. GRUB needs to be
installed in the MBR of the drive your BIOS is set to boot from. HTH.


I haven't gotten this working just yet, but I think I'm making progress.
You gave me something to work with. Thanks. Will revert.

Jim F
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