Rejean Proulx wrote:
Does software raid work on a boot device? If not, that could be one of
my problems. If it does, should grub contain md0?
You can mirror (RAID1) the boot device, but you cannot stripe (RAID0) it.
Grub needs to boot from the "raw" /dev/hda etc. device, it knows nothing about
software RAID.
This is the grub.conf from a (RHEL AS4) system I setup yesterday with RAID1
partitions for / and /boot:
#boot=/dev/hda1
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (2.6.9-11.ELsmp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-11.ELsmp ro root=/dev/md1 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-11.ELsmp.img
/boot is /dev/md0, which comprises /dev/hda1 and /dev/hdd1. / is /dev/md1 which
comprises /dev/hda3 and /dev/hdd3. GRUB must be installed into the MBR of
/dev/hda (for some strange reason I had to do this manually on this install).
GRUB doesn't handle RAID1 all than well, lilo does it better as it understands
RAID1 and installs the correct MBR on each disk. GRUB is not able to boot from
/dev/hdd1; if /dev/hda fails I will have to either modify /boot/grub/grub.conf
and install GRUB in /dev/hdd, or move the disk so it becomes /dev/hda. Because
of the way lilo works it can install boot sectors on /dev/hda and /dev/hdd, both
of which will work.
--
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail : nmw@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Phone : +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555
