[Daniel] Ubuntu & SATA RAID 1
So as part of my endeavors, I was able to order two brand spanking new Seagate 80 Gb SATA hard drives to replace all the dead drives I threw out the other weekend. Newegg shipped them promptly and I received them on Monday. I installed them, spent just a moment (literally) setting up a RAID 1 array (RAID - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. RAID 1 - pure mirror. All data gets written to both drives, reducing the risk of data loss if one drive dies.) and then off I went.As per my standard, I installed Ubuntu 5.10 ("Breezy Badger") on the computer. Not only are the drives quick but everything went just this side of perfect. My only hesitation came when partitioning, simply because it was non-obvious what I should do for the RAID. The rest of the install went brilliantly and the hardware seems to be working perfectly. I have yet to test if the mirroring is working correctly (as it's normally extremely transparent and would involve taking a hard drive down).
It would be an understatement to say I am taken by Ubuntu. I long resisted Debian, the "parent" Linux distribution on which Ubuntu was originally based for many reasons, not the least of which was the long release cycle and old software. Ubuntu seems to be much better on both accounts and is far slicker than Debian will ever manage to be. What's more, Ubuntu has replaced Slackware as my distro of choice. Considering Slackware was my favorite for almost 5 years, this was a big turn around for me.
I've got no buyer's remorse on this one and am happily rebuilding the server and enhancing it in severals ways, including the use of Lighttpd instead of Apache, the inclusion of PostgreSQL and a detailed log of everything I do to make future rebuilds/new servers easier and more standardized.
Comments
http://www.snow-wolf.net/danielblog/?p=163
I just read how you installed Ubuntu on a system with SATA RAID 1. I am in the process of doing the same thing, and I'm stuck when I get to the partitioning. Basically, it doesn't show me any drives on which I can setup partitions.
The drives do show up in BIOS, so I know the system sees them, but Breezy doesn't seem to know how to handle them.
Please let me know if you can shed any light on this or point me to the right forum to find it.
Thanks!
I didn't find the help on the forum. I believe what did was set up the two drives in the RAID BIOS (hardware, not a software RAID). Once the mirror was set up, I rebooted and proceeded with the Ubuntu install as normal. When I got to the partition step, what was listed was as follows:
Erase entire disk: SCSI 1 (sda) 80 Gb SATA
Erase entire disk: SCSI 2 (sdb) 80 Gb SATA
Erase entire disk and use LVM: SCSI 1 (sda) 80 Gb SATA
Erase entire disk and use LVM: SCSI 2 (sdb) 80 Gb SATA
I simply select the first option and let it partition it how Ubuntu wanted. Then, back at that screen again, I chose the third option. It processed and when it was done, it didn't look like it was going to use the RAID properly. I went ahead anyway and it appears to have worked.
What I suspect is that only the third option in necessary but I am not positive. You'll probably have to play around with it a bit. Best of luck!
I do have hardware RAID, and I have set up the array for mirroring in the BIOS.
Unfortunately, when I get to the partition step it doesn't seem to see the drives at all. Here is what I have listed:
Partitioning method:
Manually edit partition table
When I select manually edit partition table, I have the options of:
Configure software RAID
Configure logical volume manager
Guided partitioning
Help on partioning
Undo changes to partitions
Finish partitioning and write changes to disk
I've been through all of these options, HOPING to find something, but it just seems like the system is not recognizing the array.
You might want to try using CTRL+ALT+F2 (or F3) during the setup, which will take you to a console. Examine your drive setup using cfdisk. It is possible that your hardware RAID controller is not supported by Ubuntu. I'd search for 'Ubuntu RAID chipset support" to see if you can find what is supported or not.
Here are some links that also might help:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=259437
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Linux/Q_21685621.html (scroll past the links)
Sorry I can't be of more help.
If you had SATA RAID (like the one I have), then it's propably what is called a fake RAID! Since it is a software RAID implemented by the hardware.
The following might help:
http://www.upfrontsystems.co.za/Members/roche/sataraid
