Does Zenserver come with built-in tools to create a software RAID array during install, namely mdadm?  What about LVM tools?

Hey,

I believe that the 0.2 installer does have mdadm/mkraid and various software raid binaries. However, I am not sure about whether the 0.2 stock kernel has builtin support for software raid. With the new upcoming release, there will not be any built-in LVM or software raid support (but it will be all modular). I personally feel that it is not a good practice to place the root partition on a software raid for multiple reasons, mostly for reliability and performance. I would recommend waiting for Zenserver 0.5 (just because of the improvements, not LVM/raid support. You can still netpkg to -current however, but you would need to follow the changelog closely to make it exact.). If you do decide to install ZS, try installing to a dedicated partition, and then using LVM or software raid if you need it for separate partitions. Software RAID utilities are included as standard, and LVM utilities are in unsupported/ on the repository (might be moved to the iso in the future).

Cheers,
sega01

Stock Zenwalk kernels do support RAID 1 and 0, but not 5 (unless JP fixed this already...). I don't know in which way your ZS kernel deviates from that config sega01?

I can attest to the fact that JP's kernels now support RAID 5.

The Zenserver kernel is quite different from the standard Zenwalk kernel. It is entirely separate, and I have never used any ZW kernel packages for ZS. The ZS kernel has the GRSecurity patch, and is typically on a more stable (and older) kernel than Zenwalk. There have been quite a few changes since the last release's kernel if you look in the changelog ( http://zenserver.zenwalk.org/index.php/ ... og-Current ).

Cheers,
sega01

this may intrest zenwalk and specially zenserver,

when i was looking for a gui tool for mdadm tools,  so it could more easily intergrated into the setup  i came across something else that i had never heard before...

its evms
as far is i could understand it just relies on  its own kernel patch, a kernel driver, a set of tools, redhat's Device-Mapper,  and has 2 diferent gui's  1 for the ncurses, and 1 for GTK ...

maybe those that have better understanding than me could have a look,
but to me it sounds rather strong... and verry powerfull...

I am trying to setup raid1 on zenserver0.5. I can setup the raid array if i first use mknod to create /dev/md0 then use mdadm to create the array or assemble it if i have done it once already. I can then mount it and use it. Everything seems to work great, that is until i restart the computer. when i restart the device /dev/md0 is gone and i have to manually remake the "node" and reassemble the array before i can mount.

  in which rc script do i put the mknod and mdadm so that the array is ready before fstab gets run?

/etc/rc.d/rc.local would be the place to put it. I recently setup 2X500GB drives in software raid 0 on two servers. The performance was incredible, it worked better than I expected :-).

Cheers,
sega01

I don't know about Zenserver, but if rc.local is too late in the process, then on a udev system you should put devices that are not autodetected, but which you want every time, in /lib/udev/devices.  That gets copied to /dev very early.

markc

Markc,
you mean just make a "node" in /lib/udev/devices and it will show up as a device on boot?

Yes.  Have a look; that's where /dev/null and friends come from (when udev is used)

There are loads of things in there like floppy devices and video.

Thank you very much!!!

I think that this would only matter for software raid on /, although that method might be less "hackish". Zenserver's kernel doesn't have software raid support compiled in directly, so it will always be used (unless there is a kernel recompile) somewhere other than / or a system critical folder. This same method was what I used on the file servers that I recently built.

Cheers,
sega01

He was asking about "before fstab gets run".  The nearest thing to "running" fstab is the mount -a in rc.S. rc.local can't help there. Obviously it will work for noauto (i.e. optional) mounts.  Mounting root is a different problem:  udev, fstab and rc.local are all irrelevant.

I am not trying to mount raid1 as root. I simply thought it made more sense to have a persistent /dev/md0 for fstab to mount my raid array. That seems more of an elegant solution (keeping mounting where other mounting already happens) than just putting all that in rc.local.

no offense intended, sega01. your solution works and works well, it is just less satisfying

now the next step after putting md0 in /lib/udev/devices/, is there an rc script that gets run before fstab in which i can use mdadm to reassemble the array?