Mike Coan wrote: > On Thursday 18 October 2007 04:40:00 pm Richard Creighton wrote: > >> Mike Coan wrote: >> >>> Thanks for the reply. i am indeed using software RAID, not any RAID >>> included with the motherboard. Your configuration is much more >>> complicated than mine, and your RAID 5 is much larger than mine, so no >>> reason mine shouldn't work. I will double check settings in my BIOS to >>> make sure it isn't causing problems. I don't think I will put swap and >>> boot on RAID, just /. looking at your setup, I couldn't see anything I >>> did wrong. >>> >>> Mike >>> >> ....I forgot to ask...which kernel are you using? If need be, wait to >> create the raid until you can upgrade the kernel to 2.6.22.9-0.4-bigsmp >> (or default). You can create a stub /home on the root drive with no >> users. That works well FWIW. There are some issues with the release >> version of the kernel but the 0.4 kernel has been solid for me. >> > Richard, > > This is a clean install using the release version. So I could do a quick > install and upgrade the kernel using a stub /home as you suggest. > > Mike > > Mike, I think it is somewhat important to use primary partitions, but it is quite important that all partitions be of equal size on RAID arrays. If they aren't, your array is made up of truncated partitions of the size of the smallest partition. Also, it makes no sense to have two partitions on the SAME drive on the SAME array, IMO, that just gives you a lot of head movement and slows down read/write ops and one drive failure takes out 2 partitions which eliminates the 'protection' you get from the raid in the first place when a drive fails. So, Equal size, primary, Odd number of drives if possible with raid 5 (though that isn't as important as the others and is mostly important for Raid 5, the others work best, or only, with even numbers)
Create your basic installation on the single drive initially (this is a test, remember), upgrade your kernel and then create the raid 5 array and format it Ext3 and see if it holds water. Initially, make it /home and not / (root) and use it for a while. If it works, then you can go back to the concept that RAID is there for redundancy and should also protect the / (root), but you have proved the drives, etc, and you can start over one last time using a scheme similar to mine where the root is on a raid 1 and home is on a raid 5 and it should work. I know it can and does here, and quite well. Good luck Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
