This article is great! However, I tried this mini-HOWTO right out of the box and it failed miserably. In order to install with the options of SATA and RAID, you have to use the "sata.i" kernel. On loading, I would get a warning and error that the superblock was invalid:
Quote:
|
md: invalid raid superblock on...
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I could generate the array; I could format the array; I could install Linux into the array; I could not get the array to come back to me on reboot! I would then restart Linux with the install disks, regenerate the array, and find my install sitting there fat, dumb, and happy.
SOLUTION:
It took me two months to find this solution and I took it right out of the old
Software-RAID-HOWTO.
md was doing the complaining. Eventually, I found that
mdadm administers
md. The
Software-RAID-HOWTO (Sect 2.4) says that you don't need
mdadm. However, if you are experiencing the same problem with generating a persistent superblock that I did,
mdadm is a must.
mdadm is not in your Slackware installer disks. You may be able to copy it into your RAM OS after you load up sata.i, but I did not do that. I actually just about gave up on RAID and completely installed Slackware onto a single partition. At that point, I discovered
mdadm and ran a single command that I learned from the
Software-RAID-HOWTO (Sect 5.4). It suceeded nicely, just like
mkraid suceeded nicely. However, on reboot, all the errors went away and from then on, it finds and installs the /dev/md0 that I asked for when I ran the command.
Oddly, I seem (for now) to have no need to keep a raidtab file at all. I generated one, just in case. Anyway, here's the command that saved my sanity:
Code:
mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=raid0 --raid-devices=3 /dev/sdb2 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2
I hope this helps everybody else!
--vonSt
Note: This post is an edit of a plea from 2 months earlier to help me solve the problem of the non-persistent superblocks.
I would suggest that someone put mdadm into the install disc of slackware.
