Re: Switch running System to RAID-1

On Fri, Dec 21, 2007 at 03:12:22PM -0800, alexandrus wrote:
> I just figured that our complany's server was running on JBOD with 2 HDs,
> one of them entirely unused (d'oh!). Of course I would like to have it as
> RAID 1.
>
> Now, I built an Array from the HD in use and know how to make it bootable,
> but I suppose I have to make some changes to the boot-config before it will
> run as before. Which could these be?
>
> Also (probably a common question) how can I make a backup boot CD-ROM with
> the current settings? Is there a good HowTo around?
 

> system info:
> hwinfo says the Controller is "Intel 6300ESB SATA RAID Controller".
> boot-loader should be GRUB.
> Kernel 2.6.8-2-386.
>
> PS: Needless to say, I have a complete backup.
> PPS: Posted this the second time here because I was told it was OT in Linux
> Boot list, where I posted initally.

We saw a very long thread not that long ago on why going from JOBD to raid is either extremely difficult or impossible.

Having two drives on one controller and then using software raid doesn't mean that one disk failing won't take out the controller and possibly the second disk. Be careful in your expectations. If that were a true hardware raid controller, you would only tell Debian to forget the second drive and tell the controller to add the second drive to the array.

The best backup boot CD is the Debian installer's rescue mode which will assemble the raid array (and any LVM over top of it) and give you a chroot shell.

Also, your kernel is well out-of-date so you should be updating that server to the most recent Etch. Another kernel update today; current version is 2.6.18-5. Also, unless the server is running a 486, there is probably a more appropriate kernel within the i386 flavour.

---

Since the second drive is unused right now, to change to raid1, I'd
suggest a fresh install onto that second drive setting up raid1 with
just the one drive (a degraded array), with LVM overtop.  Transfer the
data over, change the grub menu.list so it defaults to the new install,
then add the old disk into the raid1 array.  

YMMV.

Doug.


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