i m planning to use mdadm to create a software raid1 system(mirroring)
i ve 2 40GB ide drives

but i have some questions

how could i know if raid1 support is already activated on my kernel (2.6.9)?
should my 1st harddisk be partionned using "linux raid auto" filesystem ?

this is my config:
-----------------------------------------------------------
Disk /dev/hda: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 4870 39118243+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda2 4871 4997 1020127+ 82 Linux swap

Disk /dev/hdb: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 4998 40146403+ fd Linux raid autodetect
-----------------------------------------------------------

what do u suggest me ?

could any1 gimmi detailed steps to create a raid1 system (partitionning, creating md, mounting, demounting, grub modifications ...) plz

thanks 4 help

I've used raid1 with mdadm tools but I think when I would do this again I'd take a look
at te devicemapper/ LVM

http://sourceware.org/dm/
http://sourceware.org/lvm2/

You want to make everything raid1? I left on both disks a part to boot without raid and when the
kernel is loaded it can mount the raid partition for the rest. by copying the small root partition to
the other disk and modifying the /etc/fstab file it is posible to you the other disk to book the
system.

I splitted the disks as I would do for a single disk. on the relevant partitions I made a raid
volume

# /etc/raidtab
raiddev /dev/md0
raid-level 1
nr-raid-disks 2
nr-spare-disks 0
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 4
device /dev/hda2
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hdb2
raid-disk 1

mkraid /dev/md0 builds the raid after that you can use /dev/md0 instead of /dev/hda2, you can copy this block a few times for every extra partitiion you want.

the commands you'll need are
raidstart raidstop
raidhotadd (to rebuild a raid, but the big disadvantage is that the new disk needs to have the
same partitions, as the old one, fdisk -l /dev/hda can help for this info.

good luck

Tlowk

if you give me your email, i can send you tutorial how to setup raid1 on slackware
i wrote it

Hello Akadidm,

Recently, I am finding tutorial of mirroring my Redhat Linux 9.0.

I have a found a very useful site and I have follow all the instructions and it works.

This is the website

http://wiki.clug.org.za/clugwiki/ind...grub_and_mdadm

Thanks to the author and hope that it will help you.
If you have any problem following the instruction, you can ask me.

Good luck.