On Sun, 2022-11-13 at 14:32 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: > On Sun, Nov 13, 2022 at 02:49:28PM +0100, hw wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > the Debian installer is horrible. It won't let me install on software RAID1 > > on > > a server with an UEFI BIOS. I can't find any good guide about that, either. > > > > Hi hw > > You might want to *start* with using the expert install - found under the > advanced menu option. That will give you more control, including advanced > partitioning.
That's where I kept ending up. I didn't want that, it needs to be easy to install on software RAID. Not everyone has hardware RAID to boot from. > > I want root on brtfs with RAID1. How do I get Debian installed? > > I'd suggest that you partition one disk with "all files in one partition" > as a test run to see the sizes you'll need and then rerun the partitioner. Yeah that failed. The installer was unable to install grub, then it was unable to mount /boot/efi ... It's not working right at all. > > From memory, I think you end up with something like an EFI partition of > > 512M, > a root partition of (the rest - 1G) and then a 1G swap. > > If you partition both disks to have an EFI partition at the beginning, then > a RAID partition, then 2 x 1G swap at the end. Yeah that's what I tried. > Then use the RAID manager to set up RAID1 and LVM over the top. There's no way that I would use LVM. That's yet another layer of complexitiy with no advantages whatsoever and a nightmare to deal with. I used it once and I'll never do that again. > I'm unsure how > you would install GRUB to the second disk of the RAID - it might be that you'd > need to restart once the install is complete, use the rescue option and > specifically install GRUB on the second disk of the RAID. It used to be possible to just install it on the other disk. But I didn't get that far. After over half a day and some reboots, I finally got it to install on a single disk without any redundancy. I'll have to partition the 2nd disk later after I figured out how to add another IPv6 address to one of the interfaces --- easy with network manager on Fedora (which also installs on software RAID), impossible with Debian. I won't be able to boot when the disk I installed on failed. In this case, it doesn't matter too much, but if that was a remote server there would be no way to get it installed without hardware RAID. Debian really needs to work a lot on the installer. It used to be easy to install Debian, but now it's a nightmare. > > > > The graphical version crashes with a kernel panic when booting from an USB > > stick, so I need to use the normal installer. > > Then you have wider problems than just installation, perhaps? > No, why would you say that. > > There's even not a way to select RAID1 for btrfs. What an anachronism ... > > > > You do know that this is a general purpose installer that covers 12 or so > filesystem types and allows for flexibility? Fedoras installer does a better much job. I didn't want endless flexibility but a simple standard installation on software RAID. That used to be easy with Debian. > With every good wish, as ever, > > Andy Cater >
