Couple of pages that go into RAID in detail with diagrams & calculations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels

Thanks!

So, I'm having problems with the installation of Debian. I grabbed the "netinstall" CD and booted off that. I'm going through the standard setup procedure, and it is allowing me to setup my RAID configuration now, but I'm having trouble getting the /home partition assigned to one of the hardrives..

basically, the "automatic" install wants to split the partitions like this...

60GB HDD = /home, /usr, /var, /tmp (no mention of the /etc, but it does create the /swap without mentioning it)
750GB HDD = ? (I can use as "physical volume for RAID" but I'm not sure if only or both 750GBs are too be set at that?)
750GB HDD = ?

Should I be doing this through the command line? lol... I'm trying to go off the instructions on their website. This is the page I'm using for the RAID setup... http://www.debian.org/releases/stabl...ml.en#di-setup

I'm also not sure if I should be setting up the other partitions first before assigning /home to the 750GB...

My recommendation is to ignore the 750GB drives entirely during installation. Install everything on the 60GB, setting up all of your partitions as you want them (except for /home, leave that on /). Wait to set up the RAID 1 until the installation is complete. You'll have a lot more flexibility to get the RAID up and running when you're in the actual OS versus at the installation command line.

Once you get the OS installed and running, set up the RAID. Once you get the RAID up and running and mounted somewhere (eg: /mnt/raid/), log out all users, use Ctrl+Alt+F1-7 to switch to a terminal, log in as root, rsync your /home/ directory onto the RAID, move your /home/ directory to a backup (eg: /home.bak), mount your RAID to /home via /etc/fstab, then switch back to the GUI, log in as a regular user and make sure everything works. Once you're sure it does, remove /home.bak and you should be good to go.

what about partition sizes then? I need to either fill in my GB amounts for each partition I create manually, or they will automatically create the disk amount giving the /home directory most of the disk space. Although I'll be moving the /home directory...

---------- Post added 08-26-12 at 04:35 PM ----------

Any suggestions on a good tutorial for this? haha

Remember that you don't HAVE to create multiple mount pts; you could just put everything under '/' and then move /home as shown by suicidaleggroll.
That leaves maximum flexibility for disk usage on the 60GB; it will be shared by all the system except whatever you put on the 750GB RAID.
If you're paranoid about /var (logs) filling up, give that a separate partition.
Other than that, on a home system, you don't really need to bother... I do recommend a swap partition though.

Not that I know of, but it's pretty straight forward. Basically you're just transferring the contents of /home onto the RAID, then swapping the RAID in its place. You just want to make sure no regular users are logged in at the time so none of the files in /home are in use. The root user's home directory is in /root/, so any maintenance you want on /home can be done from the root account without negative consequences (since root's home directory is not located in /home/).

I do this all the time when setting up a system using a hardware RAID controller. A lot of hardware RAID controllers aren't recognized by the kernel, so it's infinitely easier to just set up the OS normally, then install the RAID driver, get the array up and running, then swap out whatever directory you want to put on the RAID...rather than doing everything during the OS install.

Something like this should do the trick (assuming the RAID is /dev/md127, and you've already logged out as any regular user and logged into one of the Ctrl+Alt+F# TTYs as root):
If everything look kosher in /home, you'd want to add the md127 mount to /etc/fstab, then run:
and re-check /home to make sure everything looks good.

Finally, you should reboot the system to make sure everything comes up like normal.

Instead of selecting the Automatic partitioning you may find it better to boot from a Parted Magic CD (using the Parted Magic GUI) and create your partition that way prior to trying to install with the Debian CD (the partitioning tool can be a bit daunting if you have not used this before)

I knew I could leave them mounted together, but if I mounted them separately I thought maybe the system would perform better. I also thought it would make access easier if I ever needed to go through the files in that directory/partition. Would this be correct?

Makes sense. I'd rather do it this way because it allows me to nit pick through the packages I want to run on the server. The CD installation basically tries to configure all of this stuff for me. I also figured installing the packages one by one would help me to learn and familiarize myself with a linux environment.

My problem with the installation manual on the Debian.org website is that it seems to be catered to the people who want a simple OS and are using the "regular or graphical" install methods. It's for the people who just want to run through the setup and learn nothing about the system (like windows, lol). It doesn't seem to go into much detail about installing the OS with multiple HDDs, RAID, or manually partitioning the HDD(s).


Also, there is currently no (and has never been) data on the 750GB HDDs. So, I'm not sure what I'd be backing up when moving the /home partition to the RAID setup. So will the backup still be necessary?

Also, the installation CD asks me to "configure my network" and when it asks for a name it has "debian" typed in already. I assumed this wouldn't be a big deal to change as it will be the name that appears on my home network. What confuses me, is it asks for a domain name. I don't have one (yet) and I don't want to just make one up because if it cannot be changed later, I can't know that domain name will be available later once I get the server running.

Also, it automatically enters "wowway.com" (my ISP) as the domain name. Should I just leave it? The installation manual seems to completely skip this step.

You can leave the domain blank, and you can give the machine any name you want to instead of "debian" - during installation or after.

The reason is that during the installation you will be asked to create a user account. That users configuration files will go into /home/aunnix (for example). So, in order that user aunnix can log in after the RAID is in place those configuration files must be copied to the new /home/aunnix (ie the one on the RAID disks)

Ok. I didn't actually think about there being "system (configuration)" files on the home partition once it is created. For the user name, I basically want all data saved to the one "account." So, would I be able to get by with naming it "all" (or something) and then just accessing the /home/all directory when manipulating files?

This is good to know.