RE: Q: RAID-1 w/2x160GB, ReiserFS, Debian 'woody', homebrew 2.4.25 kernel

[Jens Benecke <jens@spamfreemail.de>]

robin-lists@robinbowes.com wrote:

>> >> How about RAIDing the root partition? If one drive fails will the
>> >> other be able to boot via LILO? How about GRUB? Which do
>> > 
>> > I have my root partition on a RAID1 mirror. I use grub and have
>> > "installed" grub to both mirrored drives so I can boot off either,
>> > e.g. if one fails. That reminds me, I must test this.
>> 
>> That's exactly what I want.
> 
> I've got some rough notes I made. I may tidy them up and publish them on
> my web site.

Hi Robin,

I'm still a bit torn between buying a 3ware hardware RAID for €140.- and
just using 'md'. The box is an Athlon64 3GHz, so it'll have enough CPU
power to do the RAID in software, but with partitioning etc, I think the
hardware raid will be easier to handle because you can just ignore it. As
long as the 3ware BIOS will handle failing drives, read/write errors, etc
etc. properly.

Right?
    
>> > keep /var/tmp and /tmp on the root partition.
>> 
>> No. I don't want a rogue script to fill up my root partition.
> 
> That, of course, is the reason you would want to keep /var/tmp and/or /tmp
> on separate partitions (or on the same partition - just symlink so
> /var/tmp and /tmp are the same.)

I would probably not symlink but I'd put them both on the same partition. 
  
>> What I mean is, will md resync automatically or would I have
>> to initiate this manually?
> 
> Md should re-sync automatically.

... even onto a new blank disk? Or would you have to tell md manually "this
is the new spare, please sync"? Is this easy to do? Something like

        - copy partition table
        - for FOO in 1 2 3 4 5 ; do tell md "sync hda$FOO to hdc$FOO"

or is it more complicated?
 
>> This setup seems quite complicated. Did you test the setup,
>> ie. removed one of the MD disks and looked what happened?
> I deliberated long and hard about how to implement my new system and this
> was about the least complicated route!

Oh. ;)
 

>> >> The goal is to have as "stress free" a system as possible
>> >> as little manual configuration, and in event of emergencies, as
>> >> little work to do, as possible.
>> > If you want stress free, buy a Netapps storage appliance ;o)
>> If they do all the rest that I need (smtp, web, file server,
> I was being slightly slippant - Netapps just do big storage arrays with
> very high availability. For example, if they detect that a drive is
> failing they send an email to Netapps and an engineer comes round with a
> replacement disk all without any user intervention! I guess they're the
> Rolls Royce of storage solutions. Expensive though.

Ah. Well I don't think this'll fit in our budget. :)


-- 
Jens Benecke
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