Installing onto RAID

[Tom Buskey]

pll at lanminds.com said:
>
>Hi all,
>
>I'm playing around with sw RAID under Linux.  I have a system which 
>has 4 IDE drives which I want to install onto.  I want to mirror all 
>the file systems on all 4 drives, such that if any one drive 
>fails, the system should be able to boot from the next bootable 
>device.

Hmm, most RAID that I know of mirror to 2 devices.  Though I don't see 
why more couldn't be done.  If it can't, why not mirror 2 and have a 
3rd and 4th as hot spares?  I'd also suggest 1-3 and 2-4 be on seperate 
controllers to boost reliability.

>However, I seem to be in a catch-22 position.  In order to mirror 
>across all the drives, don't I need to install to all the drives?
>And if so, how do I configure the RAID set *before* I install?

I assume you're trying to RAID root.  Surely there's a HOWTO for this?
I've done this with Solaris, but not with linux.  In any event, the 
RAID should take care of duping the data to all the devices after you 
get the partitioning done.


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Tom Buskey