Mandrake 10.1 RAID Installation blues

Hi Gals n Guys,

I've been struggling for quite some time, trying to get my machine 'take' on RAID. Have tried various combinations, to no avail. Please Help.

Here's my BIOS settings: (dont' understand much about what they mean, but here they are all the same - btw, this is the only setting where the BIOS can detect my CDROM, with others, the CDROM is awol):
IDE Legacy Configuration: P-ATA Only
SATA Running Enhanced: Yes
PATA Channel Selection: Both
SATA Ports Definition: P0-4th./P1-3rd
Configure S-ATA as RAID: No

(I've changed the last line to No from Yes, so that the software RAID from Mdk can do it's thing. (But failed with both settings)


With a Yes, every thing seems fine; But I see two drives a and b, and then configure partitions thereon as Linux RAID, assign these partions to an mdx partion (for RAID 1 mirroring) and off I go with the rest of the install.

Thing is, when I reboot after complete installation, the md0 and md5 partions are available and get mounted. All the other partions in between disappear and the boot fails.

I understand that the /boot should only be on one partion, and be a non-RAID ext3 or whatever.

Any ideas how to approach this, anyone?

I will try anything, anything to get this through.

Thanks a lot.

Melroy

I'm not quite sure how mandrake's installer handles RAID setup, so can you explain how you ordered and created your partitions? 8)

Hi Sarumont,

Thanks for the interest (and taking the trouble to ask!).

2 disks availabe A & B in DiskDrak

1a. On disk A created partion 1A (800MB) ext3, mount point /boot
1b. On disk B created partion 1B (800MB) ext3, no mount point.
2a. On disk A created partion 2A (4000MB) Linux RAID,
2b. On disk B created partition 2B (4000MB) Linux RAID,

Repeated 2a & 2b for rest of partions (equal size, Linux RAID) for eventual mount as /usr, /home, /var/log, /var & / ,till end of disk space. (of course, created 4 GB Linux Swap matching partitions on both disks).

Did an "Add To RAID" for each of the nA and nB partitions. So, 2A and 2B were added to md0, 3A & 3B to md1 and so on.

Tab has appeared in DiskDrak called "raid"
Tab to "raid" tab.
Can see all mdn partitions in raid tab. Formatted as ext3, assigned mount point as indicated above i.e., /usr, /home, etc.
Mounted, mount okay.

Continued with rest of installation.

When reboot, md0 and md5 visible (mounted in /dev/ ) but md1 - md4 not visible. Boot barfs.

Thanks a lot for taking the trouble.
Much appreciated.

Cheers.

Melroy