Phillip, Thanks a lot for your reaction. The irritating thing was that dmraid -ay on initrd did not say anything, so I thought that everything was OK. In the running non-RAID system dmraid -ay also says nothing when I give that command. In your FakeRaidHowto I found the solution. Indeed, just one missing statement in my initrd: modprobe dm-mod (+ some actions to make this statement work) A "little" thing, but a big conceptual failure; I thought that the static dmraid link contained everything you need. Still a lot to be learned for me as a newcomer to Linux. In the meantime I went through a (failsafe) session where my root directory is on the RAID set. A number of things still missing, so the regular session does not yet work. But that's part of the next steps. For those steps I will try to follow your HOWTO as closely as possible. Thanks again, Andre Hasekamp. Phillip Susi <psusi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >What does it say when you run dmraid -ay from the prompt? Is the mapper >device module loaded at that point? > >I wrote up a howto for ubuntu at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FakeRaidHowto. >You might want to take a look at that, but the idea is that I simply >added a script to the proper location that directs mkinitramfs to >include dmraid in the image and run it after loading the mapper module. > >Andre Hasekamp wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> This must be a straightforward one for all you people booting from a >> disk array with the support of >> dmraid. >> >> The issue is simply this. When I do: >> >> dmraid -ay >> dmraid -sa >> >> in a running non-RAID system, everything is fine, the second command >> shows my RAID set is active. >> Now, when I give the same 2 commands in init on initrd, my RAID set is >> not active (or, dmraid -si >> then indeed shows that my RAID set is not active). >> >> Hopefully someone can give me a tip that helps me get dmraid started >> on initrd. >> >> Next follows a detailed description of my environment. Detailed, >> because after what I've been >> through until now, it can only be the "little" things that make the >> "big" difference. >> >> Since I stumble over this problem for a while now, I can say that I >> tried with different SuSe Linux >> distributions and with different dmraid versions. At the moment I use >> SuSe 10.0 (kernel 2.6.13.15- >> smp) and dmraid 1.0.0.rc9. My RAID controller is a Promise FastTrak >> S150 TX4 with 2 SATA disks >> connected to it in RAID 0 mode. The dmraid device name for the >> FastTrak controller becomes >> pdc_dbhbgbjdgi. >> >> Eventually, of course, I'm trying to do something like Lin, Weichuan >> described in the thread "How-to >> for dmraid OS drive(s)?" in this discussion group. This thread had >> been started on 2005-08-22. >> >> So, first I made a static link of dmraid and tested it in the running >> system where I set PATH="", to >> make sure I used the right dmraid. >> >> Then I see that everyone modifies mkinitrd. Unfortunately for this >> problem, mkinitrd is different for >> different distributions, so I cannot simply adopt what others in this >> discussion group publish. To keep >> things as simple as possible, I decided to go "back to the basics" and >> I simply unzipped and un-cpio- >> ed the SuSe initrd and modified that one. By now (version 10.0) SuSe >> has had good reasons >> (probably in the context of migrating to udev) to replace "linuxrc" by >> "init", but for this description, we >> can consider them to be one and the same thing. >> >> Still, after writing the previous paragraph, it is my feeling that >> this is the first and I'm afraid only >> discussion group to try and not the SuSe discussion groups. In the >> SuSe discussion groups, they only >> discuss software RAID whenever they use RAID. So far I have not seen >> any reference to dmraid. >> >> My addition to init on initrd consists of the following statements: >> >> echo "Creating dmraid control device" >> # Create /dev/mapper like in /sbin/devmap_mknod.sh >> mkdir -p –mode=755 /dev/mapper >> # Create /dev/mapper/control like in /sbin/devmap_mknod.sh >> # with the same numbers I always see in my running system >> mknod –mode=600 /dev/mapper/control c 10 63 >> echo "Activating RAID sets" >> # Saw that someone else used –ignorelocking. Not documented in dmraid -h. >> # Eventually added –ignorelocking. >> dmraid -ay –ignorelocking >> echo "dmraid shows active RAID sets" >> dmraid -sa >> echo "dmraid shows inactive RAID sets" >> dmraid -si >> >> These statements are added as late as possible in the init script >> (after "udevstart", after modprobe >> sata_promise and after modprobe reiserfs(probably not necessary)), but >> just before the script starts >> to discover the root device. >> >> Then I cpio and gzip the initrd and copy it with an appropriate name >> to /boot. >> >> The relevant entry of /boot/grub/menu.lst looks as follows: >> >> ###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: dmraid### >> title SUSE LINUX 10.0 dmraid >> root (hd0,0) >> kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/mapper/pdc_dbhbgbjdgi8 vga=0x31a selinux=0 >> resume=/dev/mapper/pdc_dbhbgbjdgi9 splash=silent showopts >> initrd /initrd-2.6.13-15-smp-dmraid >> >> So, in the step-by-step approach, this is the "intermediate" situation >> where /boot is still on the non- >> RAID disk and the root (/) is on the RAID system. >> >> /boot/grub/device.map looks as follows: >> >> (fd0) /dev/fd0 >> (hd1) /dev/sda >> (hd2) /dev/sdb >> (hd0) /dev/hda >> >> And then I boot. The last things I see on screen during booting, using >> this initrd are the echos and >> messages from dmraid and finally, not surprising because the dmraid >> set is not active: >> >> Waiting for device /dev/mapper/pdc_dbhbgbjdgi8 to appear: >> ............... not found – exiting to /bin/sh >> >> Following this exit, you still have limited shell functionality (those >> functions which are on initrd). No ls. >> So, what I do to check: >> >> cd /dev/mapper >> mknod control ... (the node is already there) >> rm pdc* (response: no such file or directory) >> >> So the dmraid control device is there. The pdc devices are not there, >> but we knew that already from >> dmraid -si. Doing dmraid -ay at this stage also does not help, the >> RAID set will not activate. >> >> Before considering more drastic measures, I thought I'd try this >> discussion group. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> >> Ataraid-list@xxxxxxxxxx >> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ataraid-list >> > > __________________________________________________________________ Switch to Netscape Internet Service. As low as $9.95 a month -- Sign up today at http://isp.netscape.com/register Netscape. Just the Net You Need. New! Netscape Toolbar for Internet Explorer Search from anywhere on the Web and block those annoying pop-ups. Download now at http://channels.netscape.com/ns/search/install.jsp _______________________________________________ Ataraid-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ataraid-list
