Felix Miata wrote:
On 2008/08/11 06:24 (GMT-0600) Don Raboud apparently typed:
One thing to watch out for is that if /boot is on a RAID partition, then GRUB needs to be installed in the MBR. (I'm assuming this is standard linux software RAID, and not a real RAID card.)
I don't believe this is necessarily true. I'm about to do my first RAID, and investigating prior to starting an actual install. I read that if the target drives are on a fakeraid that Grub needs to be installed natively, that is, from a Grub prompt prior to loading of any Linux kernel, so that it relies on the BIOS HD specifications. Once kernel is loaded, there's only some possibility that the kernel's drive parameters match those of the BIOS RAID. Now whether to place any reliance whatsover on BIOS/fakeRAID, or just go with pure software RAID, I have yet to determine. I plan to make this system simple RAID 1 on ICH8R SATA2 with only SUSE, no multiboot, quite different from how I normally install.
Felix, I have 4 systems currently running raid1 (3 fake/bios raids and 1 pure sw raid) On one fake raid I have only 10.3. On the second fake raid I have 10.3 dual booting with XP (suse on 2 320G drives and 2 older 80G drives supporting XP). On the third, (triple boot) I have pure sw raid with 11.0 spinning oon a pair of 500G drives through an add on sata card from promise, 10.3 on an ATA 80G and Win XP on another 60G ATA drive with a swap partition used by the 10.3 install. The critical point on all fake raids is the _make sure the raid array is designated as bootable in the bios or in the add-on controller bios. (you may have to hunt to find the setting. Boot order is also important for sw raid, but not as critical. All the installs were set up with Yast without any major problems (I couldn't boot the fake raid on one install until I found the bios setting and then had to do a "grub-install hdc" to put the boot loader on the drive of the array designated bootable. As for fake or bios, there really isn't much difference. The md"tools" are a little different, but that is about it. The only major difference I saw came on rebuild after a failed drive. In fake raid the bios usually does the rebuild of the new drive with its functionality leaving the array 100% ready to go on first boot after repair. With sw raid, you boot to the good drive and then use the md commands to rebuild from there. I haven't had any complaints from either fake or sw raid. I will note that on one server with a pair of 500G seagates hanging on the fake raid provided by a Tyan board with opeteron processor, the raid1 performance is absolutely outstanding. I blows most single drive installs away. There is no concern about sw raid or fake raid (which is just sw raid + a few bios tools) being any type of performance hinderance. If there is any, "it's in the noise", negligible. -- David C. Rankin, J.D., P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org