Software Raid Mirroring on Install?

[cliff]

Is it possible to setup a software mirror using raid 1 while installing fedora? I haven't seen any documentation on this anywhere.

[Jman]

As of Redhat 9, there was an option to setup software RAID with Disk Druid, according to the customization guide (http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/custom-guide/ch-software-raid.html). I assume this functionality remains in Fedora.

I see you're looking at the "mirroring" RAID level. Good for redundancy. :)

[patparks]

You sure can set up RAID 1 (Mirror) during the install of Fedora.

When you get to the screens for partitioning, choose Disk Druid. Change the file system type to RAID and set up a partition on the 1st hard drive and then on the second hard drive. Once you have set up two of each partition, click on the RAID button. Then pick the two drives, set the file system type to ext3 or swap and mark it as RAID 1.

There you have it, a RAID 1 config during setup.

[cliff]

I set up RAID 1 within Disk Druid. Installed Fedora successfully and now the machine isn't booting to the disk. I've tried setting /boot to be the primary partition. That didn't work either. I'm using rub with no options. Any ideas on how to get Fedora to boot? Possibly within rescue mode?

[vorte[x]]

Hi cliff,

Are you receiving any errors you can possibly share?

- V

[wildbi111]

cliff - Have you solved this problem? I and others are interested in setting up raid-1 and would like to know if youhad any success.

cya
wb

[objec]

Has anyone gotten this to work?

Following the above instructions as well as those in the Docs Wiki I think I have Fedora Core 4 installed properly, but when I try to boot it, it simply doesn't work.

There's no error messages per say. Just a screen displaying some drive info and then a blinking cursor...which of course won't take any input from the keyboard...

I'm thinking that there must be some additional configuration required for grub.

-peter

[objec]

Here's exactly what is on the screen:

Booting 'Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)'

root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0xfd
kernal /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=/dev/md2 rhgb quiet
[Linux-bzImage, etup=0x1e00, size=0x18e473]
initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img
[Linux-initrd @ 0x1fe9d000, 0x1127a5 bytes]

Any ideas how to get this thing to boot?

-peter

[thelinux]

Are you using dual boot?
When I installed FC4 (with no software raid) in an dual boot environment, I had exatly same problem with you. I had the boot kernel installed on the disk where Windows are installed but some how GRUB was not installed properly. I fixed it by following some instruction on the google seach (search "grub"+"problem").

I am not sure if your problem is only related to raid or sorely related to GRUB. But you might want to re install GRUB again.
I would like to know how yours goes because I am planning to set up RAID 0 on my linux box.

[objec]

Nope, I'm not dual booting.

[Tiembo]

I'm also doing my first FC4 install, and am playing around with Disk Druid to get RAID1 to work. Here's what I've come up with:

HD0 and HD1 each have 3 partitions:
/boot, 102Mb, primary partition
swap, 2048Mb (your size may vary)
/, rest of the space

Then, I made md0, md1, md2, which combines the two /boot, swap, and / partitions, respectively.

It seems to install and run just fine with this. I haven't tested what happens when one drive fails and I need to rebuild it (after obtaining a new drive).

[JBear]

Tiembo : Strongly suggest you test with a drive missing (particularly the primary).
My install works perfectly if you pull either drive while running and reboots on the primary perfectly.
It refuses to boot off the mirror drive giving a grub read error loading stage1.5
unless you reconnect the primary after which it happily brings up the mirror partitions.
I'm about to give up on it, let me know if you have more success.

[Tiembo]

Tiembo : Strongly suggest you test with a drive missing (particularly the primary).
My install works perfectly if you pull either drive while running and reboots on the primary perfectly.
It refuses to boot off the mirror drive giving a grub read error loading stage1.5
unless you reconnect the primary after which it happily brings up the mirror partitions.
I'm about to give up on it, let me know if you have more success.

I'm seeing it too. I powered up with the primary drive disconneted, and it gave an error message. IMHO, this isn't very RAID-like at all, since the primary is the single point of failure.

I'd prefer not to go with a hardware solution, since most budget ones require arrays to be rebuild using their "boot-up" utility, which adds a LOT of downtime. I was hoping to have it done on the software level, and have it rebuilt as the OS is running.

Any ideas?

[Tiembo]

I'm seeing it too. I powered up with the primary drive disconneted, and it gave an error message. IMHO, this isn't very RAID-like at all, since the primary is the single point of failure.

I'd prefer not to go with a hardware solution, since most budget ones require arrays to be rebuild using their "boot-up" utility, which adds a LOT of downtime. I was hoping to have it done on the software level, and have it rebuilt as the OS is running.

Any ideas?

I also tried tried putting the second drive on the primary IDE channel (it was originally on the secondary), and I still get an error trying to boot. The same error occurs if I have both drives connected, but with the channels swapped.

It seems that it only works if the primary drive is on the primary channel, which isn't really RAID1-like at all.

[ArcAiN6]

man, that's the easy thing, first off you will need to partition your boot section.. then your swap, then the remaining freespace of the drives all need to be partitioned for use with LVM, then jsut hit the LVM button,and add all the LVM partitions, and select raid state you wish to use... this is all from memory on another machine, so it could be inacurate, but the base is there..

Also, if you DON'T create the /boot partition or create it after cyl 1024, you may need to enable LBA32 mode, especially if the system is using drives above 35gb, and or the bios isn't reporting the drive geometry correctly tot he system...

[JBear]

I'm seeing it too. I powered up with the primary drive disconneted, and it gave an error message. IMHO, this isn't very RAID-like at all, since the primary is the single point of failure.

I'd prefer not to go with a hardware solution, since most budget ones require arrays to be rebuild using their "boot-up" utility, which adds a LOT of downtime. I was hoping to have it done on the software level, and have it rebuilt as the OS is running.

Any ideas?
Well I tried the suggestion by ArcAiN6 but still get the all too familiar error.
I am giving up on it and will make do with the mirror being a kind of hot backup that I can at least get my data back from even if I can't boot and rebuild from it.
I have read so many people saying this is easy that I can only conclude that there is something strange going on with this machine.
I reckon if I had worked (paid) for the hours/days I have spent on this I could have afforded a diamond encrusted scsi hdwr raid and will probably go that way in future (ok perhaps no diamonds).
It's a shame promise has discontinued serious support for their fasttrak100 tx2 on linux since I have a spare sitting around and they work really nicely on 03svr and win2k.
Good luck Tiembo let us know if you get it going.

[Tiembo]

man, that's the easy thing, first off you will need to partition your boot section.. then your swap, then the remaining freespace of the drives all need to be partitioned for use with LVM, then jsut hit the LVM button,and add all the LVM partitions, and select raid state you wish to use... this is all from memory on another machine, so it could be inacurate, but the base is there..

Also, if you DON'T create the /boot partition or create it after cyl 1024, you may need to enable LBA32 mode, especially if the system is using drives above 35gb, and or the bios isn't reporting the drive geometry correctly tot he system...

Then the boot partition isn't RAIDed. Might as well just use one drive then.

[ArcAiN6]

sorry, i just realized what exactly your problem is... had it happen to me on an IBM server that was raid only, if your particular system has an available IDE connection, i would suggest installing a relatively small HDD and put the /boot section there, as well as install the bootstrapper to that HDD's MBR... seems that redhat doesn't tend to do so well on raid only systems... as for the IBM, i installed a 170mb HDD i had lying around, and then let the system auto partition
It conficured the systems ide HDD and the two logical drives* automaticly creating the following structure:
HDA --- MBR == grub
|____ /boot
|____SWAP

c0d0
|____c0d0p1
|____LVM Partition
c0d1
|____c0d1p1
|____LVM Partition

*a logical drive is what you get when you use a raid card to create a single raid partition from several drives

[davidk]

Hi,
I had the same problem and solved it by booting in "linux rescue"-mode, letting it mount the system discs and then running the following commands (if memory serves correctly):

cd /mnt/sysimage
chroot /mnt/sysimage
grub --batch
(in grub):
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)

and then reboot.

All thanks to this page:
http://xdroop.dhs.org/space/Linux/Grub+won%27t+install+to+raid-1

/David