on 10/23/00 3:14 PM, Gregory Leblanc at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> I've got a machine running Mandrake 7.1 with a root RAID-5 (RAID 0.90 with
>> 2.2.17) running and need to have this machine up 24x7.
>>
>> I've got 3 identical 30GB IBM drives working just fine:
>>
>> /dev/hda <- my boot partition is on it
>> /dev/hde
>> /dev/hdg
>>
>> If /dev/hde or /dev/hdg died, then I could run in degraded mode until I got
>> the new drive but if /dev/hda dies I am in trouble if I need to reboot my
>> machine for whatever reason.
>
>
> So what you're saying is that /boot isn't RAID at all, right?
Correct. I have a small 25MB ext2 partition at the front of each drive where
I've placed the kernel and all the pieces that usually go into /boot.
>> How can I make my other drives bootable if /dev/hda dies? I've got a small
>> ext2 partition on each drive (/boot, /boot2 and /boot3) that contains the
>> kernel and System maps but I just can't seem to be able to boot off of them.
>>
>> I have 2 machines with root RAID-1 on them and I can boot off of either
>> drive if there is a problem - I didn't have near enough this amount of
>> trouble setting them up either. I just booted up once with each drive
>> (leaving the other unhooked) and lilo'd them. But this particular machine is
>> RAID 5 and uses grub.
>
>
> Why not just make /boot RAID-1 with 3 disks? I don't know anything
> about grub mind you, so that might not be feasible, but if I was using
> Lilo that's how I'd do it.
That sounds like an idea - I hadn't thought about it. I'm not stuck on using
grub either - I'll switch over to lilo in a second if that's what I need to
do.
I just was wondering if there was a way to write MBR information onto
another drive. Sort of like:
/sbin/lilo config=/etc/lilo-hde.conf device=/dev/hde
/sbin/lilo config=/etc/lilo-hdg.conf device=/dev/hdg
Does there exist a way to do this sort of thing or am I dreaming?
Even though I've used Linux for about 3.5 years, my background is NOT in PC
hardware at all so I've never really had to deal with this sort of stuff
before. I'm used to a Mac where you can boot off any drive with the System
on it.
>> Would it be just be easier (and possibly more reliable) to have a floppy
>> kernel to boot off of in case of disaster with my boot drive?
>
>
> I happen to think that boot floppies are always a bad idea. Worst case
> scenario on a modern machine is that I boot from CDROM.
The only problem with that is that right now one of my ATA interfaces (the
one with hde and hdg - I have an Asus A7V with ATA-66 *and* ATA-100 on
board) isn't supported by any of the boot cd-roms that I have. They may be
supported in the final version of Mandrake 7.2 - in that case, it'd be a
perfect rescue cd-rom - but I'm not sure yet.
>> Any idea where I could find more information about setting all of these
>> drives to boot. I've gone through the RAID HOWTOs and FAQs and haven't found
>> any answers.
>
>
> Which RAID HOWTOs? this
> one? http://www.LinuxDoc.org/HOWTO/Boot+Root+Raid+LILO.html
I had looked at that one but just found a portion of it that I hadn't seen
before - I will look at that one a little more closely now and will attempt
to set up the /boot partition as a RAID-1 with LILO.
Thanks.
--
Darron
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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