howto install mdraid?

[Ztoragefool]

hello everyone!

i am new to TC (and quite unexperienced concerning linux. but i´ve got big aims  Wink an i love this whole idea behind tc!

right now i´m just frustrated because i can´t find mdraid in appbrowser. bug? not supported? am i too tired?

*any thoughts appreciated*

[gutmensch]

hmm... you're right, mdadm is not in the 3.x repo, although it is present in 2.x. seems somebody should take care of it and make an extension for 3.x :-/

[tinypoodle]

Umm, neither is md.tcz (kernel modules)

[Ztoragefool]

hey thanks for the quick response!

so i *should* have found md.tcz, and... any extensions more?

i found that i can load modules like raid1.ko to make /proc/mdstat appear... however, no mdadm, no management... so what should i do now?

[gutmensch]

I think md.tcz is replaced by raid-dm-2.6.33.3-tinycore.tcz (maybe not fully, depends on testing), so you would probably only need mdadm.tcz and raid-dm-2.6.33.3-tinycore.tcz as extensions.

[gutmensch]

Just sent mdadm.tcz for submission, tried it myself with loop devices and raid 0,1,4 - works great!

Be a little patient until it arrives in the repo ;-)

[Ztoragefool]

Code: [Select]

root@box:~# mdadm -Es
ARRAY /dev/md0 UUID=02a0ac6a:25e79bb1:46239aa3:c992519e
ARRAY /dev/md2 UUID=a0c3d5f2:894a8eaa:1eddabe0:16f45c0d

here i am! turns out raid-dm...tcz has already been installed by lvm2, that's why i've been able to load the kernel module. now i found a fresh mdadm.tcz in appbrowser...

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

[Ztoragefool]

i try to get my system booting from raid1. is there any alternative to changing my initrd? if not, what am i missing?

my system: microcore64.gz with some added xorg stuff

ok, my results so far:
  - extlinux boots bzImage64 from an ext2 fs on sda1 (no raid for now)
  - i fetched mdadm and raid-dm-...tinycore64.tgz
  - created a test-raid1 on /dev/sdb + missing
  - on reboot i have to modprobe raid1, then i can reassemble: mdadm -As

i guess the raid module should be in my ramdisk to let the kernel see my raid at boot time, so i

  - extracted my initial ram disk
  - copied in my ...drivers/md/ dir
  - found the file rcS symlinks to and added a "modprobe raid1" after "modprobe loop"
  - packed back my new microcore64

and now i wonder what´s missing since the module still isn´t loaded after rebooting.

any hints, please?

[tinypoodle]

Perhaps a 'depmod [OPTIONS]' command is needed in the process of remastering?
Search the forum for such.

[Ztoragefool]

gaaah you´re right - blind i have been!

it´s mentioned on the remastering wiki page, thougt the whole part was just for tc 2.x versions...

what exactly does it do? i´m not getting it from the help...

anyway, i´ll try

[tinypoodle]

http://www.phpman.info/index.php/man/depmod/8

[Ztoragefool]

sorry - i dared you to RTFM me... guess i´ve read too much yesterday, i even started seeing flickering lines on my walls. but let´s go forewards...

i used depmod and checked the new modules.dep file contains raid modules. copied the freshly packed ird file to boot dir.

still, lsmod doesn´t show raid1 after reboot. it does show loop. both modules are probed in rcS during init process... dmesg shows loop got loaded, but raid1 isn´t mentioned anywhere.

a few weeks ago, i managed to make the citrix xenserver distro (deriving from centos) boot from raid1 mainly following this howto: http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=236269&tstart=0
so this terrain is not completely new to me. maybe there are some more preconditions for tinycore? must count on some guru´s help on this.

thanks for your time!

[Ztoragefool]

hmmm no more ideas, anyone?

booting from raid1 arrays, c´mon!

first of all, what would you think: is this a silly newbie issue since you know three people who got it running? or is it likely to remain unsolved during the next week?

[gerald_clark]

You cannot boot from software RAID-1.
You can boot from a RAID member as long as you do not attempt to
mount it before the RAID is stared.

[Ztoragefool]

exactly - bootmanagers will not care about raid, but as long they are happy with the drives geometry (i.e. no stripes), booting will work from any drive the system treats as  raid1 member.

but all this is step 2. step 1 is: i´d love to see a raid1 module loaded during reboot.

init calls the rcS file which loads via modprobe:
loop
md_mod
raid1

after booting lsmod shows
loop
md_mod

but _no_ raid1. since i inserted md_mod to load, i am sure that the commands get executed. now i gotta find errormessages from failing raid1.

...to be continued