hmm, that's odd. Probably doesn't help much -- but right now I'm
running two different SATA drives through a controller card on an older
x86 system. I installed edgy and partitioned my drives to render 2
raid1 segment and a set of lvm segments. The raid1 segments don't have
any files on them right now. I actually thought it was interesting, but
the installer choose to use LILO instead of GRUB without telling me
anything about it -- but it works so I had no issue with it.
There's another option to sorta go around the issue rather than solve
it. LVM has the ability to create striped segments which I've heard is
of similar performance to a software raid0. However, thats just via
word of mouth without personally seeing results one way or another.
And as for EVMS, I think its worth installing on every system out there
just cause it simplifies hard disk management so much. Even after
you've installed your os and partitioned your drives using other methods
EVMS can still manage these volumes, it even has the ability to manage
previously setup LVM and RAID configs. It can do some pretty neat stuff
without even having to reboot the machine (takes fdisk out of the equation).
Michael Wasser
Nick Cummings wrote:
I saw some mention of EVMS but was not clear on what it was. Thanks
for the info on that. It sounds interesting at the least.
As for Ubuntu, I did try using the alternate CD for Edgy (6.10), and
as you said it let me configure a software RAID, but then later in the
install when it asked me to reboot, the system didn't come up
properly. If you're interested, you can find the details here:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=343823
I've been asking around as to what might be going wrong, but I haven't
gotten any answers yet.
Nick
On Mon, 22 Jan 2007, Michael Wasser wrote:
This may not be what you had in mind -- but a few years ago, I was
getting sick of setting up software raids, lvm, partitioning and
everything else everytime I wanted to setup new HDs for a system.
EVMS (enterprise volume management system) was a drop in solution to
not just set these up, but to maintain them later. I've never tried
to get it to work in ubuntu but I bet it wouldn't be too bad. I know
you can do it very easily with gentoo while installing .. but then
again, your installing gentoo by hand anyways so thats not saying
much. It basically combines everything you would want to do with
your hard drives into one single GUI including software raid, LVM,
and partitioning and afterwards manages everything for you.
Also if you are looking to have raid setup by the installer itself,
I've found that the ubuntu-alternative install cd does this pretty
well. Basically one of the steps is a hard drive management panel and
there's a wizard that makes creating software raids and LVM very easy.
Michael Wasser
Nick Cummings wrote:
On Mon, 22 Jan 2007, David Zakar wrote:
[snip]
I know this isn't going to be well-received advice by some folks,
but I'd recommend a switch to RHEL, CentOS, or Fedora. I know for a
fact that all of those have excellent support for RAID (and LVM) in
their installers (both GUI and text), making setup a snap.
Yeah, looking around I got the impression that Fedora/Redhat and
SUSE have the best RAID support for Linux, presumably due to their
enterprise focus. I'm not crazy about switching to Fedora (I've
liked debian and Ubuntu and it's what I'm used to), but it seems
like it may be the best solution.
[snip]
If you're planning on running RAID 0, be sure you understand the
inherent risks involved. And back up regularly! :)
Yeah, I get that the failure rate is higher (a little less than
twice as high in this case), but it's ok since I'm going to be
regularly backing up important data on an old EIDE disk.
Thanks for the input!
-DMZ
Quoting Nick Cummings <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
I was recently given a new mobo with an nForce chipset that
claimed to
have a RAID controller and two identical SATA drives with the idea
that
I could use it for a RAID0. Before being given this setup, I hadn't
really given a lot of thought to running a RAID, but I'm thinking its
at least now worth a try.
After doing a bit of reading, it appears that the "RAID
controller" on
the mobo is actually a so-called "fake RAID" that needs a driver
which
actually implements much of the RAID functionality. My options then
were to try to find a working driver for Linux or to use a straight
software RAID. Anyone have any idea how the two of these compare?
I read several claims that the software RAID in Linux is as fast or
faster than most of these fake RAIDs, but I remain a bit skeptical.
Anyone know about that? Stuff I read seemed to suggest that one
downside of the fake RAID is that it could only be read by that
chipset
(or a similar one) while the software RAID could be read by any
system
with Linux (and appropriate modules). I know an upside of fake
RAID is
that if you're dual booting it can be read by Windows, but I'm not
dual
booting, so this is a non-issue.
I initially chose to go with the software RAID, thinking it would be
easier and more compatible, but I'm having a hell of a time getting
Ubuntu to setup the RAID and install. Right now my system won't boot
properly (seems it does not like having / on a RAID). So I have an
opportunity to reconsider my decision.
Another related question is whether anyone know how the performance
compares of having two ordinary swap partitions set to the same
priority versus having a RAID0 swap partition using the two disk? Is
one significantly better than the other? Is neither all that useful?
Finally, since Ubuntu's support for setting up a RAID at install
seems
pretty bad, can anyone suggest distributions in which this goes more
smoothly? All things being equal, I probably prefer debian-based
distros, since that's what I'm familiar with.
Thanks,
Nick
