Hi guys, I am following software RAID1 installation instructions posted to debian-user in August of last year. I find problems with his instructions as I progress, and have finally gotten stuck, see "STUCK HERE" bellow.
Any suggestions where to find good software RAID1 install instructions? Any idea how I can get past the "STUCK HERE" point bellow? Here's a copy of Giuseppe's instructions with my install notes included in double paretheses. Thanks Roger TEFLChina.org ************************** Following Giuseppe's Software-Raid1 Root in Woody http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-user-200308/msg01507.html To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Software-Raid1 Root in Woody From: giuseppe bonacci <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 8 Aug 2003 18:11:07 +0200 (( Roger Roger's notes appear within double parens. Thus "I" means Roger in here and Giuseppe elsewhere. I, Roger, installed Woody on RAID1 following as best I could Giuseppe's footsteps. Hardware (Roger's) 40G IDE drives (2) hda, hdc CDROM drive, hdd Floppy drive, fd0 In BIOS set as bootable, and in this order, these: fd0 hdd hda hdc I worry that having one of my 40G drives on the same controller (same ribbon cable) as the CDROM may slow down access to it. I will check later and report here: XXXXXXXXXXX Use 80 wire 40 pin IDE cables. The courser, 40 wire 40 pin cables are slower. )) Hi all. This document briefly describes the steps needed to install a Debian Woody GNU/Linux system with root on a software raid1 device. It took me a fair amount of trials and errors before I got it right, so I would like to share my current knowledge. <snip (disclaimer)> Since this is a test setup, the environment is going to be small, and supported by the debian vanilla kernel: - Pentium III - SCSI disk 0:0, sda, 160 Mb - SCSI disk 0:1, sdb, 160 Mb I used SCSI disks because I had them easily available, but the procedure should work for IDE disks on (e.g.) hda and hdc as well. 1. Install Debian Woody. I started from floppies (vanilla kernel) + network, and partitioned the disks as follows: (( Roger - Boot from Woody CD#1, bf24 - Partition hda and hdc hda1 00098 MB spare Linux partition (in case I need it) hda2 01998 MB Swap for swap tempororily (later md0 for swap) hda3 37959 MB Linux for / temporarily (later md1 for /) ----- hdc1 00098 MB spare Linux partition (in case I need it) hdc2 01998 MB md0 for swap hdc3 37959 MB md1 for / hdc4 01053 MB spare Linux partition (this drive is this much bigger than the other one. So this is spare space outside the RAID and I might as well have it available for what not) - mount swap and / - Installed kernel and kernel modules - Configure Device Driver Modules: :: Drivers for Network Devices > VIA Rine Support. and :: RAID1 (I loaded all the RAID drivers because I don't know exactly what I need) - Tasksel > http > "ucberkeley" > Standard UNIX Server )) # fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 160 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 160 163824 83 Linux # fdisk -l /dev/sdb Disk /dev/sdb: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 160 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 1 160 163824 fd Linux raid autodetect Then I made an ext2 filesystem and installed a minimal system on /dev/sda1. Better avoid installing further packages until the raid is set up, while it might be a good idea to update the system with (( Roger I wanted to upgrade the distribution to Testing, so did, # vi sources.list (edit out security sources and do :%s/stable/testing/) # apt-get update # apt-get dist-upgrade )) # apt-get update # apt-get upgrade 2. Switch to kernel 2.4. (( Roger I already had kernel 2.4.18 because I booted install CD with 'bf24'. So I followed Giuseppe's footsteps but choose an appropriate more recent kernel, # dpkg -P lilo # apt-cache seache kernel-image # apt-get install grub kernel-image-2.4.24-1-686 # grub-install '(hd0)' )) I prefer to use raidtools2 with a stock 2.4 series kernel. Moreover, despite later versions of LILO being easier to setup, I decided to stick on GRUB. So the next steps were: # dpkg -P lilo # apt-get install grub kernel-image-2.4.18-686 # grub-install '(hd0)' Notice that for processors different from Pentium III you should pick a flavour different from '-686'. (( Roger # cat > /boot/grub/menu.lst title Debian root (hd0,2) kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 ro initrd /initrd.img IMPORTANT: - I believe Giuseppe meant to put ">" there in the 'cat' sample line. Clearly it is needed. - my 'root' is (hd0,2), not (hd0,0), because my root is on partition hda3, not hda1 (and Grub counts partitions starting from 0, so 3rd partition is 2). - In the "kernel" line I put /dev/hda3, not /dev/sda1, because my root is on 3rd partition, not 1st partition, and mine drives are IDE, not SCSI. )) Create /boot/grub/menu.lst like this: # cat /boot/grub/menu.lst title Debian root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 ro initrd /initrd.img WARNING: Don't install devfsd. Device paths change and initrd-tools get confused. Reboot. 3. Create and populate the Raid 1 structure in degraded mode. Install raidtools2: (( Roger Durring the following 'apt-get install raidtools2', I chose 'no' when asked if I wanted to have raidtools2 put RAID startup into the system initialization script, because I configured RAID into the kernel when I installed, and so things should work this way I think. )) # modprobe -k raid1 # needed to prevent preinst from complaining # apt-get install raidtools2 (( Roger - Again, I think Giuseppe meant to 'cat > /etc/raidtab', not 'cat /etc/ raidtab'. - Giuseppe has sdb as raid-disk 0, sda as raid-disk 1. That seems backwards to me, but I tried it the other way and 'mkraid' didn't like it. So I guess for this goofy procedure the order needs to be "good" raid-disk first, "broken" raid-disk second. - I have have two RAID partitions, Giuseppe has only one Raid partition. So I have these: md0 (hda2 & hdc2) for swap md1 (hda3 & hdc3) for / - My /etc/raidtab I created like this: # cat > /etc/raidtab raiddev /dev/md0 nr-raid-disks 2 raid-level 1 persistent-superblock 1 chunk-size 4 device /dev/hdc2 raid-disk 0 device /dev/hda2 raid-disk 1 failed-disk 1 raiddev /dev/md1 nr-raid-disks 2 raid-level 1 persistent-superblock 1 chunk-size 4 device /dev/hdc3 raid-disk 0 device /dev/hda3 raid-disk 1 failed-disk 1 )) Create /etc/raidtab like this: # cat /etc/raidtab raiddev /dev/md0 nr-raid-disks 2 raid-level 1 persistent-superblock 1 chunk-size 4 device /dev/sdb1 raid-disk 0 device /dev/sda1 raid-disk 1 failed-disk 1 Notice the failed-disk directive at the end of the file. It specifies that the current root disk, /dev/sda1, is to be ignored for the moment, and marked `failed' in the raid superblock. Now make up the raid: (( Roger # mkraid /dev/md0 # mkraid /dev/md1 )) # mkraid /dev/md0 If this is your n-th trial with n>1, you might be forced to use the '-f' option to mkraid. Read carefully the warning before proceeding. (( Roger # less /proc/mdstat (NOT /proc/mdstatus) )) You can check the status by looking at /proc/mdstatus Build an ext2 filesystem on /dev/md0 and copy the whole system on it (that's why it's useful to keep it minimal) (( Roger # mke2fs -O sparse_super,filetype /dev/md1 # mount /dev/md1 /mnt <------------------------- STUCK ON THIS---- mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/md1, <------------- or too many mounted file systems # find / -xdev -depth | cpio -pmdu /mnt )) # mke2fs -O sparse_super,filetype /dev/md0 # mount /dev/md0 /mnt # find / -xdev -depth | cpio -pmdu /mnt Modify /mnt/etc/fstab and /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst to mention md0 or sdb in place of sda1: # diff /etc/fstab /mnt/etc/fstab 4c4 < /dev/sda1 / ext2 errors=remount-ro 0 1 --- > /dev/md0 / ext2 errors=remount-ro 0 1 # diff /boot/grub/menu.lst /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst 2,3c2,3 < root (hd0,0) < kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 ro --- > root (hd1,0) > kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/md0 ro Now build an initrd for the new setup: # mkinitrd -o /mnt/boot/initrd.img-2.4.18-"your flavour" -k -r /dev/md0 The option '-k' instructs mkinitrd to keep the expanded image under /tmp/mkinitrd.XXX/initrd instead of deleting it. Notice that /mnt/initrd.img -> /boot/initrd.img-YYYY, so don't try to be too smart. 4. Reboot with root on /dev/md0 and synchronize the disks. Reboot. So far, the system is still configured to boot from the first disk and leave the second alone. Now we have to manually interrupt grub's boot sequence in order to launch the second disk instead of the first: Ask grub for a command line (press 'c') and at the 'grub>' prompt issue the command: grub> configfile (hd1,0)/boot/grub/menu.lst You should get the same menu item as before, but meaning a different sequence (use 'e' to examine it, then ESC to return to the menu). Press RETURN to boot. You should end up with linux running and /dev/md0 mounted as /. Now it's time to change the partition type of the old root disk from 83 to FD: # fdisk -l /dev/sda Disk /dev/sda: 64 heads, 32 sectors, 160 cylinders Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 160 163824 fd Linux raid autodetect Now modify /etc/raidtab to remove the last line ('failed-disk...'), and attach the old root partition as a plex of the raid1 structure: # raidhotadd /dev/md0 /dev/sda1 The md driver starts synchronization, that can be checked by looking at /proc/mdstat. Rebuild the initial ramdisk with a clean raidtab (paranoid mode on): # mkinitrd -k -o /initrd.img Setup grub on both disks: # (echo 'root (hd1,0)'; echo 'setup (hd1)'; echo quit) | grub # (echo 'root (hd0,0)'; echo 'setup (hd0)'; echo quit) | grub Done. Now you can reboot (just to test the setup works), play with dselect to your pleasure, etc. Again: if you happen to install devfsd you might end up with an unbootable system, and no way to recover. As an exercise to the reader, try disabling one of the disks and test your ability to recover... If you find a way out of the Kernel panic, I'll be glad to know. ;-) best regards -- gb ************************* -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
