----- Original Message ----- From: "Rechenberg, Andrew" <ARechenberg@shermanfinancialgroup.com> Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 14:19:52 -0500 To: Christer Bäckström <cbackstrom@chemist.com> Subject: Re: Firewire RAID bootparameters? > I'm not sure which distro you're running, but we needed a module to load > before another one and I modified the linuxrc script in our initrd image > to change the load order. > > Red Hat (and probably other distros) initrd images have a script in the > initrd image to load drivers. You can loop mount the current image, add > the modules you need, modify the script, and then copy it back into > /boot. > > The initrd image in Red Hat is gzipped so this is the procedure that I > follow: > > . *** MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR CURRENT INITRD AND BOOTLOADER CONF *** > . cp /boot/initrd.img /tmp > . cd /tmp > . mv initrd.img initrd.img.gz > . gunzip initrd.img > . mount -o loop initrd.img /mnt/cdrom > . Copy any necessary modules to /mnt/cdrom/lib > . Edit /mnt/cdrom/linuxrc and add a couple of lines to load your > firewire module in the proper order. > . umount /mnt/cdrom > . gzip /tmp/initrd.img > . cp /tmp/initrd.img.gz /boot/mynewinitrd.img > > Then what I would do is make a new bootloader (LILO/GRUB) entry with all > the same options except use your edited initrd image instead of the > stock one. That way you can test it, but still be able to boot with you > known-good initrd image. > > This is probably a big hack, but it worked for me :) Yes, this is new information for me. I never considered (or knew how to) manipulate the initrd loading. I got two more mails saying about the same thing, but they weren't cc:ed to the list. (Thanks Joe Pruett and David Haring) This would enable me to put even my root-filesystem on the firewire drive. Very nice. In my case, as I only keep my /home on the raid1 mirror, it was even simpler. I looked into the initrd man page, and found a reference to append "noinitrd" to lilo.conf, which stops loading of modules by initrd altogether. The rc.sysinit will then, in my case (Mandrake-9.2), load the modules in the right order. I stiil wonder if the loading sequence should not be different when loading compiled-in modules. Nowadays firewire and usb2 drives are fast and commonplace, and an excellent way of securing the regular harddrive. Especially on a laptop, where the regular drives are small and singular. To load the raid subsystem before these systems can't be right. I wonder if i t should not be changed? Anyways: Me happy. Thanks all for the help! /Chris > > Hope this helps, > Andy. > > > On Fri, 2003-12-12 at 07:45, Christer Bäckström wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I've recently bought a 160Gb firewire drive and RAID1:ed it to mirror my > > main harddrive. Unfortunately, the md subsystem seems to load before the > > firewire in the kernel bootsequence, which mean I have to do some weird > > stuff to make it work. Basically, I compiled the md system as modules > > (with the SCSI patch to make it work a bit better), and hid the modules > > in a different directory, so they wouldn't load. I later load them in > > manually rc.sysinit. This work, but is a little clumsy. Is there a way > > to use append any boot-parameters to lilo to make the RAID subsystem > > load the firewire system? Or is there another solution? Thanks, > > > > > > /Chris > > > > - > > 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 > -- > > Regards, > Andrew Rechenberg > Infrastructure Team, Sherman Financial Group > > -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm - 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
