On Monday 19 July 2004 02:07 pm, James Knott wrote:

As I recall, only the /boot partition won't work on software RAID.

No, that will work also, I found a link to a how-to on that. Had it running in SUSE 7.2. I'm sure google would find it again. The grub setup gets a little hairy, but I had it working. Was not worth the effort tho. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen

Ok, I have reinstalled the system and creating the /boot partition outside of the array like you suggested does allow me to create the / partition inside of the RAID array. So I now have my drive formatted and setup like I want it with /boot being the only partition that is outside. Now I need to figure out what to do to lilo as the article that was linked here refers to having boot inside the array not outside. can anyone help me with this? Thanks, glenn On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 00:35:24 -0800, John Andersen wrote:

On Monday 19 July 2004 01:48 pm, Glenn Hancock wrote:

...

Can anyone tell me how to get the "/" partition to work in a RAID 1 configuration for software raid?

i have the drives setup using RAID 1 on SUSE 9.1 but couldn't get root in. Now when I remove either of the disks the entire server goes down due to bad fsck information on bootup. I try to run manually and nothing.

The only way I can get the system to boot properly is to boot with both disks in the drive.

having to partition 2 root partitions means that I have to create a different name on the second drive as I can't have two root drives and therefore switching the disks just doesn't work...

Just make a separate /boot (maybe on on each drive - use one as a manual backup for the main one).

Then, raid can be set up on the / partition (because everything needed to boot it is on the /boot partition).

-- _____________________________________ John Andersen

Well, if it were the SUSE standard like you suggest then why does SUSE install default to Lilo? Also I've heard that GRUB is dificult to get to work with a Soft RAID configuration. Of course if I don't any help with my problem I will just have to assume that SUSE can't do a software RAID 1 setup. Here are my problems if anyone can help me... 1) I configure my drive using software RAID 1 and have everything in the RAID except for the /boot partion. System boots, RAID runs everything is cool. 2) I remove the 2nd hard drive and the system gets to an fsck manual line and won't boot past it, even if I run fsck manually. 3) If I run the system with the first drive removed it won't boot at all due to there being no boot entry in the second drive... can anyone help? glenn On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:55:20 -0800, John Andersen wrote:

Lilo? Glenn, its 2004. Use Grub. Thats the SuSE standard.

On Tuesday 20 July 2004 07:44 am, Glenn Hancock wrote:

...

Ok,

I have reinstalled the system and creating the /boot partition outside of the array like you suggested does allow me to create the / partition inside of the RAID array. So I now have my drive formatted and setup like I want it with /boot being the only partition that is outside. Now I need to figure out what to do to lilo as the article that was linked here refers to having boot inside the array not outside.

can anyone help me with this?

Thanks,

glenn

On Tue, 20 Jul 2004 00:35:24 -0800, John Andersen wrote:

...

On Monday 19 July 2004 01:48 pm, Glenn Hancock wrote:

...

Can anyone tell me how to get the "/" partition to work in a RAID 1 configuration for software raid?

i have the drives setup using RAID 1 on SUSE 9.1 but couldn't get root in. Now when I remove either of the disks the entire server goes down due to bad fsck information on bootup. I try to run manually and nothing.

The only way I can get the system to boot properly is to boot with both disks in the drive.

having to partition 2 root partitions means that I have to create a different name on the second drive as I can't have two root drives and therefore switching the disks just doesn't work...

Just make a separate /boot (maybe on on each drive - use one as a manual backup for the main one).

Then, raid can be set up on the / partition (because everything needed to boot it is on the /boot partition).

-- _____________________________________ John Andersen

-- _____________________________________ John Andersen

Well I have a few questions to answer so here goes: I am using lilo as it was the default and I have read numerous places that is easier to work with for the RAID stuff but switching to grub can be done as well if that is the answer. I was testing by removing one of the two drives and rebooting. Now I am in more of a pickle though because last night I found a page explaining how to setup lilo for booting to both drives and it said the following: issue command "lilo -v" and it would take care of it. The output looked like what they showed but after rebooting I experienced the same problem. I then looked a the man pages for lilo and noticed that the -v option said nothing about adding the boot sector to the other drive but the -M option said that was what it did. So I executed a "lilo -M /dev/sdb" and the correct output displayed telling me it had copied the information to the other drive. I then tried to reboot after removing one of the drives but the system didn't boot. I then replaced the drive to try something else and now there is no boot sector on either drive. The system is completely shut down. I tried to go into rescue mode but as usual SUSE doesn't explain how to do anything in rescue mode so now i"m not able to figure out how to mount my / partition to check my lillo settings or to do anything else for that matter. I can't believe that a task that is so simple for everyone else could be this difficult. Actually setting up the RAID proved very simple but the testing of the RAID is where the problems are coming in. I'm beginning to wonder how many people out there are running RAID and never tested what would actually happen if a drive died. Any help as usual is appreciated but still in the (or worse) fix... cybercrypt

thanks for all the help but I haven't found anything related to running grub with a RAID configuration. I've seen things mentioning it but comments that follow it stating that is complicated to get going and that lilo works better. Granted, finding recent articles on this subject have not been that easy... thanks glenn On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 12:02:15 -0400, Louis Richards wrote:

Glenn Hancock wrote:

<SNIP>

...

I tried to go into rescue mode but as usual SUSE doesn't explain how to do anything in rescue mode so now i"m not able to figure out how to mount my / partition to check my lillo settings or to do anything else for that matter.

I can't believe that a task that is so simple for everyone else could be this difficult. Actually setting up the RAID proved very simple but the testing of the RAID is where the problems are coming in. I'm beginning to wonder how many people out there are running RAID and never tested what would actually happen if a drive died.

Any help as usual is appreciated but still in the (or worse) fix...

cybercrypt

When you get to the login prompt in the rescue system just type root and hit enter. Next you need to create a directory to mount your existing system.

mkdir /mnt/temp

Then mount your system there.

mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/temp

Of course, the above partition may not be the same as yours. Just change it if needed. you can use fdisk to check out your partitions.

fdisk /dev/hda

The use the "p" command to list the available partitions and the "q" command to exit.

If you have a separate boot partition you will need to mount it as well.

mount /dev/hda2 /mnt/temp/boot

Then do a chroot.

chroot /mnt/temp

Now check the settings in /etc/lilo.conf, /etc/fstab, /etc/raidtab and run lilo. Hopefully this will get you back up and running.

Now ... if it were me ... I would switch to grub if you can get your system back up.

Once the system is up, install the grub software and then install grub on both MBRs like this:

grub

Grub>device (hd0) /dev/hda Grub>root (hd0,0) and then: Grub>setup (hd0)

Grub>device (hd0) /dev/hdb Grub>root (hd0,0) and then: Grub>setup (hd0)

quit

Now that grub is on both drives just add an extra entry in menu.1st like this:

title Linux [MIRROR] kernel (hd1,1)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/md2 vga=0x317 splash=silent desktop resume=/dev/md3 showopts initrd (hd1,1)/boot/initrd

This is just a copy of whatever you have for linux already but changing the drive number in parenthesis.

Depending on how your motherboard's BIOS handles a failed drive, you may or may not need the second entry to boot.

HTH, Louis

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John Andersen wrote:

Lilo? Glenn, its 2004. Use Grub. Thats the SuSE standard. not of much value if there is little information in the RAID area. At the end of last year I tried to setup soft RAID with SuSE 9.0. After a lot of web searching I found some information but all of it was for Lilo. When Grub was mentioned, it was something like "I have heard this will work with Grub but have not tested it". Has that changed in the last 7 months? Is there some useful information for soft RAID and Grub?

Damon Register

On Wednesday 21 July 2004 08:02 am, Louis Richards wrote:

Install your system normally, creating the raid array during the install. The installer will automatically change from grub to lilo.

Ah, that must be why Glenn thinks the default for SuSE is Lilo instead of grub. Is not, and has not been for a long time, except perhaps with creating raid array via yast. I created my raid array after the fact with the raidtools and manually editing raidtab, (its not that hard). The nice thing about Grub is you can attempt to boot with a dead raid from either of the regular raid-1 disks. I've had to do this once or twice. With Grub you can just drop into a grub prompt and edit the boot commands manually and get up and running. With raid as your root directory, this may well be necessary should one drive fail. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen