2009-09-03 07:13:18
\My adventure installing Ubuntu 9.04 on softRAID0/1 (part 1)
So yesterday I got a couple of new HDD's: WD black 640 GB 3.5" drives, so I figured I would do something I had wanted to do for a while: give my primary desktop a RAID setup. I've gotten tired of backing up pictures and other important information (...but mostly pictures), and it would make my life easier to have a RAID1 array.
However, I do not have a hardware RAID, or anything of that nature. So after doing some searching, I came up with these links:
- Ubuntu Installation/ SoftwareRAID
- How to configure Linux Software Raid using mdadm on Ubuntu
- How To Set Up Software RAID1 On A Running System (Incl. GRUB Configuration) (Debian Lenny)
So, following along with the collective of what these articles were stating, I went to download the Ubuntu Alternate installer CD. This did not turn out very well, though. I downloaded it twice, and had the right md5sum. Burned it 3 times, and each time when I checked the disc for defects, the same file was always corrupted. How can this happen? I even tried two different burners.
Giving up on this, I went for the regular AMD64 Desktop installer. I figured I could boot to the live environment, and then do an apt-get update followed by an apt-get install mdadm.
I removed my previous hard drives: a 40GB drive (containing my /boot, /[root], a swap, and other such things), and my 300 GB drive (which contained /home, and a store partition that was shared between users). I installed the twin 640GB drives onto SATA1 and SATA2 ports.
In the live environment, I opened up GParted and partitioned the drives (nearly) identically--The only difference with drive sdb was that I left out the /boot partition, and made the swap 1.5 GB.
Drive sda:
- 500mb /boot partition
- 1GB swap area
- 15 GB /root (a)
- 500-whatever-was-left GB for /home (a)
I then used the commands above to install mdadm, and then I built two arrays.
I don't really care about /[root] being backed up, so I decided to go for a little performance with RAID0:
sudo mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=0 --chunk=4 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sd2
Then I made my main /home partition, which I most certainly do want backed up:
sudo mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=1 --chunk=64 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda4 /dev/sd3
I assembled and activated the arrays, and then ran the installer. Proceeded through it normally, selecting root to be on /dev/md0, and home to be on /dev/md1. Completed normally.
Rebooted, came up to grub, continued into Ubuntu bootup screen. and Goes into the BusyBox bash prompt. Something wasn't right.
This was pretty much as far as I got last night, being a big under the weather, and it got late. I looked up some things and I think it may be due to the location of the kernel, or the way the kernel was set up when mdadm was ran. I think I know how to fix it (potentially), but I'll continue on with "part 2."
Posted by: jamba
Category: ##linux
Tags: #linux #softraid #ubuntu
Published Date: Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:13:18 +0000
Original URL | Original guid | PostID= 120
