On Wed, May 12, 1999 at 02:55:15PM +0200, Louis-David Mitterrand wrote:
> First, kernel-2.2.7's documentation states that booting on raid1 is not
> supported yet, but looking at the alpha raidtools-0.90 package it seems
> possible. Does it mean that if I patch the kernel sources appropriately
> then booting on raid1 is supported (experimentally)?
no, lilo does not know anithing about raid devices, so you have to make
a separate (non raid) /boot filesystem to hold the kernel.
someone said that GRUB may be able to boot from a raid1 device, looking
at the docs it seems easonable, but i haven't tested it yet.
> Second, is there any way at all that I can implement raid1 without
> destroying all data on my present disks? From the docs this seems
> inevitable.
yes, two ways actually get martin bene's patches that were posted on
the list, build a raid with only one device (your new disk), copy
everithing on the new raid (find ... -xdev | cpio -p ....),
add the old disk to teh array and lo! all done.
(srcond method explained at next quesition)
> Third, (naive questions) if raid1 supports on-the-fly disk
> "reconstruction" why can't I simply add another identical disk alongside
> my present one, activate raid1 non-destructively and have disk2 be
> "reconstructed" as the mirror image of disk1?
because linux-raid keeps a 4K raid superblock at the end of the partition
so if you already created the filesystem you have no room for the superblock.
i have not yet tested this, but you could get resize2fs (you need a partition
magic license for that, shrink the filesystem by 4K, dd one disk over the
other, then create a new raid.
> Finally, I read that the way to install root-raid is to use the to-be
> swap partition to install a minimal Linux system, then create the raid1
> partition, then test and configure the kernel, then boot from raid and
> install the complete system. Is this correct?
this is a third way, but it is long, boring and just a pain in the ass if
you already installed.
btw, fourth way involves using a tape drive. :(((((
L.
--
Luca Berra -- [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Communications Media & Services S.r.l.
