Debian and IDE RAID?
Danijel Pajur
The time has come to upgrade my trusty old Debian box, and I\'ve started looking
into getting an affordable IDE RAID solution. Searching the web for various IDE
RAID controllers and Linux revealed lots of problems, most of which I\'d assume
are related to the actual hardware, or lack thereof.
I know times change, and I\'m wondering if anyone could advise me if there\'s an
IDE RAID controller out there that works well with Debian, in RAID1 (mirror)
mode? Or would I be better off just scrapping the idea, and going with single
drives or software RAID?
What I\'m really looking for is a trouble-free solution to running two drives in
a mirror, and if there\'s a management software - great, if there isn\'t, the
least I expect is to see errors in the syslog if one of the drives fails. It
doesn\'t seem like much to expect, but somehow I think it might be hard to find
with IDE RAID offerings :)
I appreciate all your help.
kind regards,
Danijel
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nate
> Hi everybody!
>
> The time has come to upgrade my trusty old Debian box, and I\'ve started
> looking into getting an affordable IDE RAID solution. Searching the web
> for various IDE RAID controllers and Linux revealed lots of problems,
> most of which I\'d assume are related to the actual hardware, or lack
> thereof.
>
> I know times change, and I\'m wondering if anyone could advise me if
> there\'s an IDE RAID controller out there that works well with Debian, in
> RAID1 (mirror) mode? Or would I be better off just scrapping the idea,
> and going with single drives or software RAID?
if your just interested in raid1, I would say scrap it and go with
software raid. linux can boot directly off software raid 1 array if
you want, it takes some work to get it setup, but it works good I have
several systems in this configuration
nate
Danijel Pajur
> if your just interested in raid1, I would say scrap it and go with
> software raid. linux can boot directly off software raid 1 array if
> you want, it takes some work to get it setup, but it works good I have
> several systems in this configuration
Thanks Nate!
Yes, this would work for me perfectly, I\'m not even worried if there\'s a slight
performance loss, as long as I can recover from a drive failure. Is there a how-
to on setting it up to boot from software raid1?
I\'ll probably be installing Debian from 3.0 ISO images, I haven\'t downloaded
them yet though, and would like to know if you can just set up the software
raid1 from there and partition/install the system?
kind regards,
Danijel
nate
> Thanks Nate!
>
> Yes, this would work for me perfectly, I\'m not even worried if there\'s a
> slight performance loss, as long as I can recover from a drive failure.
> Is there a how- to on setting it up to boot from software raid1?
>
> I\'ll probably be installing Debian from 3.0 ISO images, I haven\'t
> downloaded them yet though, and would like to know if you can just set up
> the software raid1 from there and partition/install the system?
There may be a HOWTO, I haven't read any HOWTOs though, I can
give a quick rundown of how I do it, which requires a spare disk
to install to:
(I have not yet tried debian 3.0 from scratch so I will reference
from debian 2.2)
1) install the core debian2.2 system on a disk, any disk, just not the
disks you plan to use for raid
2) dist-upgrade to woody
2) I install the kernel sources(2.2.19) raid0.90 patch(hard to find),
and my other kernel patches, compile the kernel and include raid
support
3) install the raidtools2 package
4) reboot with new kernel, connect raid drives to slave controller
5) make a floppy boot disk, I think I used the command mkrescue
6) setup the raid array according to the docs in /usr/share/doc/raidtools2
7) format the array(if your using 2.4.x filesystem no problem, if
your using 2.2.x pretty much your only option is ext2)
8) go down to runlevel 1 (init 1)
9) mount raid array on /new
10) copy all data (cp -a) from old drive to new drive(except /proc)
11) mkdir /new/proc
12) edit /new/etc/fstab and change the root partition to /dev/md0
13) shutdown
14) move raid disks to primary controller(*)
15) power up, boot with boot disk, tell it root=/dev/md0
16) if it comes up, edit /etc/lilo.conf (if your using lilo) and change
the config to reflect the new root filesystem
17) run lilo
18) remove boot disk, reboot
19) hope it comes up
(I may of forgotten something...hope not!)
* there is a catch, its beena while since I've done this on IDE, but
when using SCSI I had to keep the drives in the exact same configuration
before using the spare drive to install as after using the spare drive.
that is my raid array was /dev/sda sdb sdc, depending on where my
spare drive was it may of screwed that order up, screwing up the raid
array. so you may have to use the bootdisk earlier in the process or
reconfigure the disks so this happens. since your doing a fresh install
theres no harm in screwing it up the first or seocnd times around.
there may be an easier way to do this, I've done this about 4 times on
SCSI systems and 1 time on an IDE system.
good luck!
nate
Bob Proulx
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DEFFONTAINES Vincent <Vincent.DE...@coe.int> [2002-08-27 17:34:11 +0200]:
> I use HPT370 chipset on an ABIT board.
> It provides hardware RAID and ATA100 support, but I never used RAID
> functionnalities on it, therefore I cant tell you how well RAID works.
I have an Iwill SIDERAID-100 with the HPT370 and after much hacking I
have deduced that linux ataraid is just not quite functioning there.
Yet. The project looks to be *almost* working. It was teasing me by
showing some functionality but not enough to run. It could turn
around any day now. Or six months from now. Or next year. But for
now I recommend not using it for the haredware ataraid. Stick with
linux software raid.
Bob
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Tony Wasson
there\'s an
> IDE RAID controller out there that works well with Debian, in RAID1
(mirror)
> mode? Or would I be better off just scrapping the idea, and going with
single
> drives or software RAID?
I have ArcoIDE RAID-1 cards running in 2 debian servers. The cards don't
require a driver, the machine detects an ArcoIDE hard drive instead of the
Maxtor, Western Digital, IBM, etc. you actually have installed. The drives
don't need to be identical in size or geometry, the included bootable floppy
will 'create' the mirror set the same as the smallest drive.
For the non-hot-swap unit, you must use the bootable floppy to rebuild the
array after a failure. For the hot-swap (RAIDcase) you can use kernel
patches to auto-rebuild, although I have not used this feature.
As a side note, I have heard the recommendation that instead of RAID-1,
simply backup the primary drive to the backup on a regular basis, and you
will avoid many hassles when deleting a critical file. I see this as a
decent idea, however I am not sure how easy this would be when upgrading
kernels or changing hardware (or any files in /dev).
Tony Wasson
Adrian 'Dagurashibanipal' von Bidder
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On Wed, 2002-08-28 at 01:06, Tony Wasson wrote:
[RAID]
> As a side note, I have heard the recommendation that instead of RAID-1,
> simply backup the primary drive to the backup on a regular basis, and you
> will avoid many hassles when deleting a critical file. I see this as a
Just my $.02 (actually CHF.05)
RAID and backup are somewhat orthogonal.
RAID protects from drive failure ONLY, allowing continuing service when
a drive fails, and very short (or no) downtime after drive replacement.
Backups protect from external errors, mainly. Of course, a regular full
backup will restore the system on a clean drive with only a few hours
data lost, but this involves substantial downtime. Especially when only
doing incremental backups, it involves restoring 2 or 3 backup sets. I
guess 80% or more of restore operations from backup are done because of
user errors, restoring just a few files from a recent backup.
AND: RAID does not protect from attacks or your kernel going crazy. So
most people concerned enough to use a RAID will want to do backups, too.
(Of course, people doing striping or RAID-5 for performance reason on
easily recovered data - such as news spools or so - are a special case).
I recommend to do regular backups (daily!), and RAID only if high
availability is really critical, or if single disks are too small. To
avoid having to manage tapes, I usually do backups on a 2nd disk
(normally not mounted) - while not as secure as an offline (or even off
site) backup, it's just much more convenient than always remembering to
change tapes/CDs/whatever.
If it is possible I also use cvs, even for very small things. This is
also a form of backup (as long as the cvsroot is safe), especially
regarding stupid file deleting.
cheers
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Thomas Halahan
Hi,
I've just succesfully installed and am now running Debian3r0 with Abit
BD7II-RAID ATA133 motherboard which uses the Highpoint 372 Controller
(hardware). It was a bit of a struggle getting it to work as you need a
spare disk to prepare the kernel that will boot from the raid disks. I have
the RAID in 0 mode and it is fast. Highpoint provide a driver that you can
compile as a module for your kernel. Some of this is non-free, therefore it
is downloaded partly as source and partly as a pre-compiled lib. It works
much like CDRW by making the RAID devise a scsi one. I have not had to use
any raidtools package.
Highpoint also provide a frontend that allows you to monitor your disks,
rebuild them etc..
Tom