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Old 02-02-2011, 10:35 AM   #16
mostlyharmless
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Sure, although if you go to "search" on this forum and type "slackware raid dmraid" you will get some excellent step by step explanations, mostly by Erik_FL. There are a number of them going back quite some time.

I should mention that I mirror my RAID0 array with another disk, so that I actually dual boot Windows and Slackware on a mirror composed of a 320G disk and a RAID0 array composed of two 160G disks. Both mirrors have an MBR with a copy of GRUB, and the BIOS can boot either one. Both mirrors have three identical partitions: a Windows partition, a boot partition and an encrypted LUKS partition which contains swap and / using LVM for Slackware. Slackware uses dmraid in an initrd to initialize the RAID0 array, then mdadm to setup the mirror. Windows uses a driver to recognize the RAID0 array, then uses "Dynamic Disks" (LDM, not to be confused with Linux's LVM) to mirror the RAID0 drive to the other 320G drive.

It is, in fact, easiest to set up the whole RAID0 array if you have another disk to install from, rather than having to use the live CD. If you use a live CD, you'll have to have another place, a zip drive, or USB thumb drive (or floppy!) to store your boot files until you're ready to go. In my case, I installed on the regular disk first, then used sfdisk to copy over to the RAID0 array, resynced the mirrors and voila! You don't have to do it that way.

The Slackware help files detail how to setup RAID and LVM with encryption, using the mkinitrd script as shown in the above posts. All you have to do, in addition, is go into the /boot/initrd-tree directory after generating the initrd, modify the file "init" so that you have "dmraid -ay" near the beginning of the file. You will have to provide a copy of "dmraid" in /boot/initrd-tree/sbin with the necessary librairies (or make a statically linked version) and then re-run "mkinitrd" without any parameters. You can also modify the initrd to search for the LUKS key on a floppy, zip or USB drive or prompt you if there isn't one present.

Last edited by mostlyharmless; 02-02-2011 at 11:53 AM.
 
Old 02-02-2011, 12:24 PM   #17
mlpa
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mostlyharmless View Post
Sure, although if you go to "search" on this forum and type "slackware raid dmraid" you will get some excellent step by step explanations, mostly by Erik_FL. There are a number of them going back quite some time.

I should mention that I mirror my RAID0 array with another disk, so that I actually dual boot Windows and Slackware on a mirror composed of a 320G disk and a RAID0 array composed of two 160G disks. Both mirrors have an MBR with a copy of GRUB, and the BIOS can boot either one. Both mirrors have three identical partitions: a Windows partition, a boot partition and an encrypted LUKS partition which contains swap and / using LVM for Slackware. Slackware uses dmraid in an initrd to initialize the RAID0 array, then mdadm to setup the mirror. Windows uses a driver to recognize the RAID0 array, then uses "Dynamic Disks" (LDM, not to be confused with Linux's LVM) to mirror the RAID0 drive to the other 320G drive.

It is, in fact, easiest to set up the whole RAID0 array if you have another disk to install from, rather than having to use the live CD. If you use a live CD, you'll have to have another place, a zip drive, or USB thumb drive (or floppy!) to store your boot files until you're ready to go. In my case, I installed on the regular disk first, then used sfdisk to copy over to the RAID0 array, resynced the mirrors and voila! You don't have to do it that way.

The Slackware help files detail how to setup RAID and LVM with encryption, using the mkinitrd script as shown in the above posts. All you have to do, in addition, is go into the /boot/initrd-tree directory after generating the initrd, modify the file "init" so that you have "dmraid -ay" near the beginning of the file. You will have to provide a copy of "dmraid" in /boot/initrd-tree/sbin with the necessary librairies (or make a statically linked version) and then re-run "mkinitrd" without any parameters. You can also modify the initrd to search for the LUKS key on a floppy, zip or USB drive or prompt you if there isn't one present.
I think that you miss one point. I use fake raid and I think that during install the driver used was mdadm.
I have Windows already installed in a array Raid0.

This is new to me.

Last edited by mlpa; 02-02-2011 at 12:28 PM.
 
Old 02-02-2011, 02:04 PM   #18
mostlyharmless
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You can use mdadm instead of dmraid in your initrd if you want. Mdadm 3.0 supports fakeraid for some chipsets. Did you look at the thread suggested by mRgoBlin? Windows uses it's own driver for each manufacturer; it doesn't matter about that.

Last edited by mostlyharmless; 02-02-2011 at 02:11 PM.
 
Old 02-02-2011, 02:44 PM   #19
mlpa
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Yeah I read the post, and like I'm using slackware64 -current with the latest mdadm it mount and install fine. My problem is the bootloader
 
Old 02-02-2011, 04:28 PM   #20
mostlyharmless
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Grub 0.97 used to be in /extra, or you can find it anywhere, patch it to make splash screens, read dynamic disks, make a pot of coffee, etc. You only have to install it once.
 
Old 04-30-2011, 06:49 PM   #21
caduqued
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Thumbs up

Quote:
Originally Posted by Darth Vader View Post
Yup! Of course you need a initrd, to assemble the arrays before the real system boot on your RAID0.

Here is a little script, mkinitrd-2.6.35.10-smp.sh, used by me, to generate a properly initrd.

Code:
#!/bin/sh

KVERSION=2.6.35.10-smp
ROOTFS=ext4
ROOTDEV=/dev/md1p1

mkinitrd -c -u -R -k $KVERSION -f $ROOTFS -r $ROOTDEV -m jbd2:mbcache:ext4 -o /boot/initrd-$KVERSION.gz


Hi Mr. Vader,

Thanks a lot for this info. Using your script I was able to set-up finally my RAID 0 Slackware 13.37... Thanks a lot.
 
Old 04-30-2011, 07:05 PM   #22
mRgOBLIN
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There is also /usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh that is able to generate a suitable initrd command or initrd.conf that you might find useful.
 
Old 05-01-2011, 11:56 AM   #23
slkrover
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The best way I found was to run the 3 hdd raid-0 with windows and then install virtualbox and run slack from it. I dont like it but it gets the performance I want without all the driver install.
 
Old 05-02-2011, 03:57 AM   #24
caduqued
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Well,

In my case I am running full slackware using (mainly) RAID 0. I only followed the instructions at README_RAID.txt that came with the Slackware ISO, and to make the initrd as per this thread... and that was all.

/boot: RAID 1
/ : RAID 0
swap : RAID 1

And my machine is working flawlessly
 
  


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