Raid1 advice needed.

[ubutux]

Hello all I have an issue with a server I have built and I'm after some advice on what my options are to fix this issue .I have set up 2 x 120gb sata drives with 4 partitions on each /boot , /root , /vserver and swap with software raid and lvm and followed the etch perfect setup with xen .All went well and i have a couple of virtual servers running without a problem .That was until i simulated a drive failure.I could not get the system to boot from sdb,i did a little reading and found i needed to install grub on sdb ,which i did still with no luck .What I think the problem is ,is when i initially set up the drives i havnt setup the boot partition to use raid 1,all the others are setup using raid 1 ,not sure why i didnt set them all up do this ,and here lies my question .Can the /boot partitons be converted to raid 1 so they mirror and the server will be able to continue with either drive if a failure occurs .Thanks for any info you can give.

[ubutux]

Hello again . There must be some information that can be given relating to this ? have I not explained my issue clearly enough ? Would it be reasonable to say that it would be easier to set up two new drives using software raid1 (on all partitions this time) and lvm and then copy all the old partitions to the relative partitions on the new raided drives ?
thanks for help that can be given .

[falko]

Right now I can't help you, but I've added this to my ToDo list (writing a howto about this boot issue).

[ubutux]

Thanks falko i will be keen to read the howto ,in the mean time i will try and work out how i can correct or overcome this issue so i can continue with the server upgrade .thanks

[archerjd]

Hey ubutux,

Your right about having to install grub on sdb, but you also have to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add a second menu item that specifies sdb to boot from.
Then you set the second menu item to default to if the first menu item fails.

Here is a good document I found after much research that I have bookmarked.
http://www200.pair.com/mecham/raid/r...aded-etch.html

[ubutux]

Cheers Archerjd that info is great ,i had a quick glance and it looks like the info i have been looking for .i havnt got time now ,but i will go through it in detail shortly.I think my main problem is that the /boot partition is not mirrored and wondered if it was possible to change the /boot partition to raid1 while the server was up,this server is not in production yet .I'm upgrading my current servers to virtual servers which this machine im playing with now will form the main physical server.So i want to get it set up right and make sure i can recover from disasters . Thanks again

[archerjd]

No problem.
If the /boot partition is not raided then this document should really help.
I know it did for me when I had to convert a linux firewall to raid 1.