File Server and Raid

[Paul Schmidt]

Johan Ramm-Ericson wrote:
> On Wed, November 15, 2006 13:00, Richard Brown wrote:
>   
>> Hi Johan
>>
>> On 15/11/06, Johan Ramm-Ericson <ubuntu at ramm-ericson.se> wrote:
>>     
>>> On the whole, I agree with your description Russel. However; Richard,
>>>       
> it
>   
>>> might be a good idea for you to read this :
>>> http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html
>>> It's sort of dry and technical (most manuals are) but getting some
>>>       
> understanding of what's involved will probably save you headache
> later...
>   
>> Thanks for the link. I haven't read it yet but will do. It seems that I
>>     
> made a mistake at some point. Is it possible to format the drives as ext
> 2/3 and swap and then raid array the drives after that. In my drop down
> menu when partitioning the drives it actually states raid as an option
> in partitioning and that is what I thought I should select. The reason I
> ask is that I can easily start again - I want to get it right and I know
> that I could troubleshoot but I feel it is better to start from a good
> point rather than trying to troubleshoot a flawed install.
>
> I began writing an explanation and realised that the whole issue of
> setting up RAID devices is one that should have been answered before in
> Linux / Ubuntu on the 'net. A few (not very thorough) google searches
> later confirmed that - but poorly... It seems there are too many ways to
> go about this for a given manual to be generic enough to apply to
> everyones particular setup. Still, I do realise this may be hard to
> accomplish.
>
> Having said that, the URL I posted is valid - but a bit outdated. For
> example; it's pre-Ubuntu... ;-)
>
> Now, to answer your question; barring going right back to the beginning
> and reinstalling your system from scratch, I would scratch the partitions
> you currently have set up for RAID and then go with the posted How-To.
> You'll probably learn the most that way..
>
> As a mental note to myself (and anyone else listening) it looks like it's
> high time to post some info on the Ubuntu wiki that could explain and
> describe the simpler and most common RAID system setups. I think everyone
> would benefit - or should I say: "ubuntu"  :-)
>
> /johan
>
>   
This might not be an answer you are looking for but definitely recommend 
looking at it.  I setup my raid following Gentoo's wiki on it.  Its 
pretty straight forward and you can apply whatever disk layout you want. 

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Gentoo_Install_on_Software_RAID

You can easily apply it to Ubuntu, just have to setup grub on both hard 
drive manually so that way you if your first drive fails, your second 
drive can still boot the system.  Just partition your drive like the 
Wiki says, run the install, during which bootloader install always 
failed for me, then run grub /dev/sda1 and then grub /dev/sdb1, or 
whatever your partitions are setup as.  You don't have to setup raid for 
the swap, but if your drive with the swap partition dies, then they 
system will most likely crash.

This worked quite well for me, and was the most straight forward answer 
I found for setting up a raid for linux.

My two cents.

Paul