[NTLUG:Discuss] Software RAID under 2.6 kernel

[Ralph Green, Jr]

Howdy,
 I asked about this a couple of weeks ago.  I tried it out and I thought
I would report back.  My test system was a Intel 2.4GHz Celeron on an
845GVSR motherboard.  I installed two 10 GIG Maxtor drives and started
up the install of SuSE 9.1.  I told SuSE to create a RAID 1 set using 4
GIG on each of the drives formatted as /.  The install went fine.  I
rebooted, and it came up fine.  I skipped creating a boot floppy, which
was a small risk, because the instructions say some systems won't boot
the RAID set.  I applied all updates available, then powered off and
unplugged the slave drive.  I powered on and was disappointed to have
the system refuse to boot.  Mirrored drives that won't boot after one
drive fails are kind of silly, so it is on the the next step.  I am
going to install a Comact Flash to IDE adapter with a 64 meg CD card as
the primary master.  I will put the /boot filesystem there.  Everything
else will stay on the RAID 1 set on the 2 10 gig drives.  I'll let you
know how that works.
Good day,
Ralph
p.s.  I would hope it went without saying that if you saw something
wrong with what I did, I invite you to tell me.  That was my hope, but I
decided to be explicit and state it instead.