Thank you both for your help with this matter. I am pleased that I have
overcome this issue and here are my conclusions.
My previous raid configuration was set up using CHS method for harddisk
geometry. There was no reason for doing this other than it was a part of the
diagnostic procedure for a previous issues regarding a western digital
harddrive that identifies itself to the tyan bios as being ata66 but really
only operates reliably at ata33. The CHS really had nothing to do with the
timing issue, but I suspect that the partition table arrangement did. The
symptom of this timing issue was not being able to reliably modify the
harddrive's partition tables, strangely enough. Mandrakeuser.org has the
write up about certain western digital harddrives that have this issue.
When using CHS, the block arrangement for the boot partitions on both the
drives is different that with LBA. LBA arranges partition sizes equally. I
am not 100% certain, but this is the only change that I implemented that
made the difference. It might explain why when both drives were installed
that the system booted, but when either was removed, it would not boot.
Using LBA translation method in both the BIOS and with fdisk using matching
LBA geometries, I can now boot from either drive- the way raid1 is meant to
be . . .
Other Details:
I am using kernel 2.2.18 with all the patches and recommendations that
Godfrey Livingstone provided.
All is well with this and I will be doing benchmarks at 32k size chunks
shortly.
I am using lilo 21.5 and a single lilo.conf.
Here are my partition arrangements OLD and NEW:
OLD:
Disk /dev/hda: 15 heads, 63 sectors, 13328 cylinders
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 63 68039 33988+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hda2 68040 12278384 6105172+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hda3 12278385 12594959 158287+ 82 Linux swap
Disk /dev/hdc: 16 heads, 63 sectors, 16278 cylinders
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 63 66527 33232+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdc2 66528 12275423 6104448 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdc3 12275424 12594959 159768 82 Linux swap
NEW
Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 784 cylinders
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 63 80324 40131 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hda2 80325 12289724 6104700 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hda3 12289725 12594959 152617+ 82 Linux swap
Disk /dev/hdc: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1021 cylinders
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 63 80324 40131 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdc2 80325 12289724 6104700 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdc3 12289725 12594959 152617+ 82 Linux swap
Here is my /etc/lilo.conf:
#boot=/dev/hda
boot=/dev/md1
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
default=vmlinuz
vga=normal
keytable=/boot/us.klt
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinux
label=vmlinux
# root=/dev/hda2
root=/dev/md0
append=" ide3=autotune ide1=autotune ide0=autotune hdh=ide-scsi"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label=vmlinuz
# root=/dev/hda2
root=/dev/md0
append=" ide3=autotune ide1=autotune ide0=autotune hdh=ide-scsi"
read-only
Thanks again for all of your help!
Charles Wilkins
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