Bootable RAID1 on FC10 almost works ...

[leitner]

I'm trying to set up a Fedora 10 box with bootable RAID 1. I've followed Falko Timme's excellent HowTo on doing the same with FC 8 and I'm hoping that Fedora hasn't changed so much that it is no longer applicable.

Everything goes pretty much as expected during the setup. I started with an installation on one disk, and a second unformatted disk. After the 'grub' setup is complete, I reboot for the first time and hold my breath. The machine reboots (into runlevel 3, as I set it up) and shows a login prompt. I enter my username, the password prompt appears, I enter the password. Then a brief flash of a couple lines that seem to say something about "last login was ...", and then I get the login prompt again. Same thing happens. I try loggin in as another user, same results. If I enter an incorrect password, I get the message "unable to authenticate user, as I would expect.

Googling and searching this forum does not seem to produce any information relevant ... does anyone have any idea what's up or how I can get around it? Thanks ...

Rich Leitner

[falko]

I could imagine that something went wrong with /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow when they got copied to the RAID device.

I'd boot into the "normal" system again and do the copy process again. Look out for any error messages.

[leitner]

Indeed, the entire process went without a hitch until the "cp -dpRx / /mnt/md2", when I had two error messages about copying. I wish I had written them down verbatim, but the first was something like:

Copying /rich/something/something/cups/0/certs: Operation not supported

I assumed this might have to do with 'cups' printing and I could safely ignore it. The second was a bit more cryptic and had to do with "/.gvfs". I've been googling like mad about gvfs and learning a bit, though I don't know exactly what might have gone wrong here. The message was "permission denied", so I'm guessing this might be the one.

Anyway, as far a booting back into the normal system, I'm not sure I can! It won't let me sign in. However, I think if I disconnect the 'sdb' hard drive, the 'sda' hard drive should still be in its original state and should let me sign in. I'm not at the machine now, but I'll try it when I can.

Thanks Falko, and thanks for taking the time to provide such a terrific guide!

Rich

[leitner]

It was as I expected ... I cannot log in even after disconnecting one of the HDDs. I have tried reinstalling the entire OS via the DVD. I thought this would essentially destroy the remnants of the old stuff, but apparently this is not the case.

Am I missing something obvious? How can I essentially "erase" (not just delete) the remnants of my previous attempts? I actually removed the HDD and put in a new spare I had laying around ... this gave me a clean slate until I ran into problems again. Now I'm out of 'clean' HDDs so another method is needed.

Thanks again for any help ...

[falko]

You can install the system with just one HDD and add the second one afterwards.

[leitner]

Originally Posted by falko

You can install the system with just one HDD and add the second one afterwards.

Yes, this is what I did the very first time: I installed Fedora 10 on the first drive, left the second drive alone (though it was installed on the board). Didn't format it, partition it or anything. But after trying and failing, it seems the partitioning on the second HDD remains, even after "deleting" it in the Fedora Installer. I understand that 'deleting' does not mean 'wiping', and this seems to cause problems with the next attempt.

Currently, I'm using a disk utility to "wipe" the second HDD, then I will reinstall Fedora 10 and try again. I'll be more diligent about documenting the error messages I get. This machine is essentially a "laboratory" for me to learn, so I'm willing to spend as much time as necessary not only to get it working, but to understand what I am doing. Thanks again, and I'll post my results ...