What about using LVM to create a virtual disk the sum of the partitions? Has anyone had experience with this?
Cyan On Thu, Aug 23, 2001 at 03:47:51PM +0300, George Karaolides wrote: > > On Thu, 23 Aug 2001 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > My question is whether it would be possible to install Debian onto a > > software RAID (which is not in place at the moment because NTFS partitions > > are covering 2 out of 3 harddisks) and how that would work. > > It is absolutely possible; I have put the servers at work on Debian with > the root filesystem on RAID 5. > > > I thought of creating a small ext2 partition mounted as /boot and then > > having one linear RAID mounted as / - would this be a good idea? > > It would certainly work, but as to it being a good idea, it has rather > more chances of failure than a single disk. A failure on either disk > would trash the filesystem. > > > I've never had any harddisk crashes > > Have you heard of a Mr. Murphy and his law? You're going to have a disk > crash when you've finished installing your new linear RAID, and have been > using it long enough for some important data to accumulate. Nad what > about cables going wonky or coming loose etc.? In a single-disk system, > this will often only bring the system down; with a linear device, it can > trash the whole filesystem as the devices go out of sync. > > I would suggest that a much better idea than using your two (I presume > non-identical) disks as a linear array is to use them as a JBOD (Just A > Bunch Of Disks) setup. Just install a basic system on one of them, > partition the other one and mount those partitions as /usr/local, /home > and so on before completing the install. This will give you improved > performance as the system will read data files and system files from two > disks, and if the /home disk conks out you just replace it and restore the > user files from backup. If the system disk conks out you won't be any > worse off than you would be after a disk crash on a single-disk system. > > > how do I create it prior to installing Debian? > > I haven't done it myself, but I'm fairly certain that you must have a > spare disk or partition available which will in the end *not* be a part of > the linear device on which the root fs will be. You will make a scratch > install of a basic system on that, use it to create the linear device, > copy the system to it, make the device bootable and then complete the > install with all your required software. Incidentally, this is unlike > RAID 1, 4 or 5, where with the new raidtools you can use the failed-disk > directive to include the device with the initial install in the RAID > array. > > All things considered, I wouldn't bother with linear mode. It offers no > advantage besides concatenating two devices to make a bigger filesystem. > This I think was only relevant in the days when you had to concatenate two > disks to get the 400 Megs you needed for a /usr filesystem big enough for > X Window. I don't think it's relevant today. > > George Karaolides 8, Costakis Pantelides St., > tel: +35 79 68 08 86 Strovolos, > email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nicosia CY 2057, > web: www.karaolides.com Republic of Cyprus > > > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
