From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Rudy Zijlstra Subject: Re: Linux mdadm superblock question. Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2010 09:46:19 +0100 Message-ID: <4B7A5B5B.6040307@grumpydevil.homelinux.org> References: <4877c76c1002111752h23e14f7aibe58a89181e6f493@mail.gmail.com> <4B77044B.1020609@zytor.com> <20100216112708.4a863f86@notabene.brown> <4B79F3CE.5030907@zytor.com> <4B7A42EB.3070405@zytor.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <4B7A42EB.3070405@zytor.com> Sender: linux-raid-owner@vger.kernel.org To: "H. Peter Anvin" Cc: david@lang.hm, Neil Brown , Michael Evans , Justin Piszcz , linux-raid@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-raid.ids H. Peter Anvin wrote: > On 02/15/2010 07:18 PM, david@lang.hm wrote: >> On Mon, 15 Feb 2010, H. Peter Anvin wrote: >> >>> On 02/15/2010 04:27 PM, Neil Brown wrote: >>> >>> There are three options: >>> >>> a) either don't boot from it (separate /boot); >>> b) use a bootloader which installs in the MBR and >>> hopefully-unpartitioned disk areas (e.g. Grub); >>> c) use a nonstandard custom MBR. >>> >>> Neither (b) or (c), of course, allow for chainloading from another OS >>> install and thus are bad for interoperability. >> >> I have had no problems with XFS partitions and lilo as the bootloader. >> I've been doing this for a couple of years now without realizing that >> there is supposed to be a problem. >> > > LILO also can be stuffed in the MBR (and then uses block-pointers from > there). There is one more option that I didn't mention, which is to > put the bootloader of a separate partition, OS/2 style. Again, breaks > the standard chainloading model. There is another configuration that fails. Use partitioned md. I do not think it matters whether over whole device or with a partition table. Neither grub nor lilo will boot off from it. I've tested that exensively with a partition on the disks. I am using PXE boot to boot 2 servers with that configuration. That adds a dependency on the pxe boot server, but considering the function of those servers they are moot if that pxe server is dead anyways.... Cheers, Rudy