On Wed, 2002-03-27 at 20:05, David Morris wrote: > As background, I am setting up a SparcStation 20 (2 processors, SMP kernel) > to use 4 9GB disks in a RAID-5 array (external SCSI box). The system has a > 500 MB internal disk available as well. I would prefer that the entire > file system be on the RAID array rather than only specific directories. I > will be using Debian Potato (2.2 kernel by default). > > I have seen mention several times that the 2.4 kernel is preferred over the > 2.2 kernel, however I have also heard tell of troubles with the 2.4 kernel > and SMP systems...anyone using Raid on a Sparc with a SMP 2.4 kernel? I'm not, at the moment. However, Sun4m (SS20 type machines) is well maintained, and the 2.4 kernel actually has working RAID on SPARC code. There was some endianness issue with the 2.2 code, which I don't think ever got a proper fix. > I plan on booting to the raid array, however, I obviously cannot install > the system directly to a raid array as I at the very least have to patch > the 2.2 kernel. So what is the best way to get the system transfered over Sounds like you need a better installer. :) > to the RAID array? Install the system normally, then copy it over in the > manner one would for an NFS-ROOT system, or is there some better way? I'd do a very minimal install to the 500MB drive, then get a useful kernel running and booting, then move things over to the RAID array. > Once I have the system installed to the array (however it gets done), what > is the best way to boot? I've seen notes on passing 'md=...' to the > boot sequence, but that was always for RAID-0 or RAID-1...this still work > for RAID-5 (i.e. md=0,/dev/sda1,/dev/sdb1,/dev/sdd1,/dev/sde1)? Lilo, and probably grub, can't boot from a RAID 5 volume. You could make a tiny mirror of 4 disks, and boot from that, though. Greg -- Portland, Oregon, USA. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
