> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jane Dawson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2000 2:03 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: Problems booting from RAID
>
> Hi,
>
> I am tearing my hair out over this stuff (I should have
> mentioned that I am
> completely new to not only RAID but Linux in general). This
> is the first
> task I have been given in my new job - talk about being
> thrown in at the
> deep end! :)
Yikes, I think I'd have killed somebody for that one. :-)
> I've written to many lists for help with this and received various
> conflicting advice and suggestions (many thanks to those who
> have written
> back so far!) So, I've decided the best plan of action is to
> start again
> from scratch with blank hard disks, a new reinstallation and
> to copy the
> setup as described in Boot + Root + Raid + Lilo HOWTO -
> however I don't
> understand how to create a /boot partition as well as a root
> partition.
>
> I would be eternally grateful if somebody could explain the
> logic behind
> this as well as how to do it :)
My logic behind this (others may have different logic), is to help out with
stupid boot loader issues. Most machines that I've used have some booting
issues where they can't read past a certain part of the drive. I create a
smallish (20MB), /boot partition, right at the start of the drive (to make
reads fast, but seek slow). Then I use the rest of the drive, broken into
various parts, for everything else I try to store.
You create the partitions just like you would any other, usually by using
some breed of fdisk, or perhaps a specialized partitioning tool. Here's
part of the output from 'fdisk -l /dev/sda' and 'fdisk -l /dev/sdb' on my
RAID test server:
[root@Socks /root]# fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 259 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9 72261 82 Linux swap
/dev/sda2 10 259 2008125 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 10 13 32098+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda6 14 259 1975963+ fd Linux raid autodetect
[root@Socks /root]# fdisk -l /dev/sdb
Disk /dev/sdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 261 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 9 72261 82 Linux swap
/dev/sdb2 10 261 2024190 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 10 13 32098+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb6 14 259 1975963+ fd Linux raid autodetect
[root@Socks /root]#
Well, on this one, I didn't follow my own advice, but you can see what the
partitions are (actually, I think that RedHat wouldn't let me partition as I
would have liked). Hopefully that answers your questions...
Greg
