Linux HowTo: Setting up and booting Debian Linux from Soft RAID1
January 16, 2004 - Filed in Linux HowTos by Felix
Setting up a Software RAID1 as root partition for a Linux system has the advance of no reliance on special hardware controllers and reduced running costs. However, the actual process of setting it up can be very time-consuming, annoying and finally a failure. Thus, here a quick break-down of how I got my soft RAID1 array running with Debian.
0. Disclaimer
Make sure you have at least one complete backup of your data in a safe place before following anything in this HOWTO. This HOWTO is provided AS-IS. I take no responsibility or liability for damages of any kind that may arouse out of the use of this information. You use it solely on your own risk. If you are not ready to do this, do not continue.
1. Partition the harddrives
The easist way to set up such an array is by using three harddrives, with the first holding the actual Debian install, the other two being the target RAID1 array.
Setup
| Drive | Capacity | Task |
| /dev/hda | 120 GB | RAID 1, first HD |
| /dev/hdb | 120 GB | RAID 1, second HD |
| /dev/hdc | 80 GB | Install to be transfered to the new RAID array |
You can partition the harddrive using cfdisk or fdisk. Make sure to set the parition types to 0xFD and not to format them (yet).
In the following this parition/raid array is used as basis:
Parititions
| Partition | RAID Array | RAID Mount point |
| /dev/hda1 | /dev/md1 | /boot |
| /dev/hdb1 | /dev/md1 | /boot |
| /dev/hda2 | /dev/md0 | / |
| /dev/hdb2 | /dev/md0 | / |
2. Create the two raidarray
Create the two raid arrays.
mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/hda2 /dev/hdb2 mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb1
The two raid arrays are now active. You can check this with:
cat /proc/mdstat
Now is the right time to create /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
echo 'DEVICE /dev/hda1 /dev/hda2 /dev/hdb1 /dev/hdb2' > mdadm.conf mdadm --detail --scan >> mdadm.conf
mdadm.conf is later used by mkinitrd to build the special initrd. Make sure md0 and md1 are not exchanged. Edit the file as needed, then move it to /etc/mdadm/
3. Format the raidarrays
Here, we use ext2 for /boot (/dev/md1) and ext3 for / (/dev/md0).
# Ext3 for the root fs mkfs.ext3 /dev/md0 # Ext2 for the boot fs mkfs.ext2 /dev/md1
4. Make a special initrd with RAID support
In order to have raid support, the md and raid1 modules need to be inserted into the kernel before INIT. To later mount the filesystems, we need ext2 and ext3. We'll add all of them to /etc/mkinitrd/modules
Contents of /etc/mkinitrd/modules
# /etc/mkinitrd/modules: Kernel modules to load for initrd. # # This file should contain the names of kernel modules and their arguments # (if any) that are needed to mount the root file system, one per line. # Comments begin with a `#', and everything on the line after them are ignored. # # You must run mkinitrd(8) to effect this change. # # Examples: # # ext2 # wd io=0x300 ext2 ext3 md raid1
Add other modules as you need them. For now, we've added all modules we need and can create the new initrd.img:
mkinitrd -d /etc/mkinitrd/ -r /dev/md0 -o /boot/initrd.img-2.4.23raid
Adapt /etc/lilo.conf
# /etc/lilo.conf
lba32
boot=/dev/hda
root=/dev/hdc2
install=/boot/boot-menu.b
map=/boot/map
delay=20
vga=extended
default=RescueLinux
image=/vmlinuz
label=RescueLinux
initrd=/initrd.img
read-only
image=/vmlinuz
label=LinuxRAID
initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.4.23raid
Install the new boot block and reboot, try LinuxRAID:
lilo shutdown -r nowIf you encounter a kernel panic, you can switch back to RescueLinux and boot as usual. Press "Shift" on the lilo prompt to bring up a menu.
While booting with LinuxRAID, watch the output closely. Prior to the INIT call, md0 should be detected and added as RAID array. It is "normal" (well, actually Linux seems broken or behaviour changed) the "Autodetection" does not yield results:
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays. md: autorun ... md: ... autorun DONE.Notice: "autodetection" does only appear if md and raid1 are compiled into the kernel, which is not the case with standard Debian "kernel-image"-kernels. There is no need to compile in support for them when following this HOW-TO, since the compile-in-way as stand-alone solution does not seem to work anyway.
5. Copy your old install over to the RAID
Check whether raid arrays got correct enumeration (e.g. md0 and md1 not exchanged) with
cat /proc/mdstat
Then mount the raidarrays, copy your old system and cleanly unmount them again
# Copy /boot to the raid array mount /dev/md1 /mnt cp -ax /boot/ /mnt/ umount /mnt # Copy / to the raid array mount /dev/md0 /mnt cp -ax / /mnt/ umount /mnt
6. Adapt lilo.conf on RAID array
Now let's mount md0, chroot to it, change fstab, lilo.conf, call lilo, leave, unmount and reboot.
mount /dev/md0 /mnt chroot /mnt vi /etc/fstab mount /boot vi /etc/lilo.conf lilo umount /boot exit umount /mnt shutdown -r now
New contents of /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information. # #/dev/md0 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1 /dev/md1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 2 #/dev/hda3 none swap sw 0 0 #/dev/hdb3 none swap sw 0 1 /dev/fd0 /floppy auto rw,user,noauto 0 0 proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
New contents of /etc/lilo.conf
lba32
boot=/dev/hda
disk=/dev/md0
bios=0x80
partition=/dev/md1
root=/dev/md0
install=/boot/boot-menu.b
map=/boot/map
delay=20
vga=extended
default=Linux_OLDRAID
image=/vmlinuz
label=LinuxRESCUE
initrd=/initrd.img
root=/dev/hdc2
image=/vmlinuz
label=Linux_OLDRAID
initrd=/boot/initrd.img-2.4.23raid
read-only
7. Further notes
- Example of a /etc/raidtab (not needed here, but if you need one)
# md0 is the boot array raiddev /dev/md0 raid-level 1 nr-raid-disks 2 chunk-size 32 # Spare disks for hot reconstruction nr-spare-disks 0 persistent-superblock 1 device /dev/hda2 raid-disk 0 device /dev/hdb2 raid-disk 1 # md1 is root array raiddev /dev/md1 raid-level 1 nr-raid-disks 2 chunk-size 32 # Spare disks for hot reconstruction nr-spare-disks 0 persistent-superblock 1 device /dev/hda1 raid-disk 0 device /dev/hdb1 raid-disk 1 - If you need to zero out the persistent superblock (you may loose data through this!), you can use
mdadm --zero-superblock - Stop a raid-array with
mdadm --manage --stop
- Start a raid-array with
mdadm --manage --run
- Get the persistent superblock info
mdadm -E
- Assemble and start all raid-arrays with
mdadm --assemble --scan
- You can mount a initrd with
mount -o loop /boot/initrd.img-2.4.23raid /mnt
.. the important line then is in /mnt/script (added there by mkinitrd) ..mdadm -A /devfs/md/0 -R -u 2ebbd037:da9d0664:7294680c:63c60e36 /dev/hda2 /dev/hdb2
- It is/was actually possible to tell the kernel where to look for raidarrays, then let it assemble them. This is
done with the flags
append="md=0,/dev/hda2,/dev/hdb2 md=1,/dev/hda1,/dev/hdb1"
in lilo.conf. However, at least with kernel 2.4.23 and 2.4.24 you will get the kernel brabbling of bugs in md.c and refusing to recognize the raid arrays. It seems, though, that this worked in older 2.4 revisions.
8. Further references
- O'Reilly devcenter.com article on mdadm tools
- linux.com "The Software-RAID HOWTO"
- German Software RAID HOWTO on Debian (outdated)
Last updated: 16.01.2004
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