Installing onto RAID

[pll at lanminds.com]

In a message dated: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 10:45:21 EDT
bscott at ntisys.com said:

>> Actually, it does work.  It may not be officially supported, I don't know,
>> but I know it's currently being used.
>
>  Really?  You mean, in your raidtab file, you can have a "raid-level" set
>to 1 with a "nr-raid-disks" greater than 2?  That's neat.  Or do you just
>mean mirroring two already-mirrored "md" devices (which occured to me after
>I sent my original message)?

Well, in the exact case I know it's being used, there is no
/etc/raidtab file, since, with auto-detection, the raid meta-data
is actually contained on the devices themselves (in the boot block 
perhaps?).  The way this instance works, is that the systems are PXE 
booted using some commercial/proprietary boot image (non-Linux), and 
one of the scripts the image runs dd's an image to the hard-drive 
which contains all the partition table information, etc.
It's like GHOST in a sense, but IMO, not as good :)

I'm looking at installing using FAI, which actually uses a Linux 
kernel for booting and then will install a customized environment 
based on your specified needs.  I think I have everything I need at 
this point, it's just a matter of trying it out :)

>> I know the kernel also needs "autodetection" enabled, however I can't 
>> seem to find that option in the kernel config.  Anyone know where 
>> that is?
>
>  Looking at the 2.4.18-3 sources that shipped on my RHL 7.3 box, it appears
>that RAID autodetect is always on, unless explicitly turned off (with the
>"raid=noautodetect" kernel option).  Check out the drivers/md/md.c file, and
>search for the string "autodet".

Hmmm, you'd think they'd mention it somewhere in the docs :)
-- 

Seeya,
Paul
--
	It may look like I'm just sitting here doing nothing,
   but I'm really actively waiting for all my problems to go away.

	 If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right!