The follow procedure can be used to implement software RAID for Fedora Core 3. This will mirror two drives for fault tolerance.
Part Two Installation with RAID Partitioning in Setup:
Start the system with the CDROM as 1st boot device with the 1st CD in the drive
1. Proceed with the installation until the partitioning section.
2. We will be doing a manual partitioning. Leave the first drive checked (e.g. sda) and click Next
(The install program will create a default for you which we will review for reference in the next step.)
3. Review the configuration. For sdb, whatever partitions existed will still be there. But for sba, it will probably have:
102 MB /boot partition
Approx. 2-3 GB of swap (e.g. two times memory on the target machine)
The rest of the disk for /
It may have the 2nd two in a Volume together
4. Highlight & click Edit for each partition, and change each partition type to Software RAID. The mount points will disappear. (Remember the mount points for each one.)
5. When you are done, hightlight the drive line itself (e.g. dev/sda) and click the RAID button .
6. Choose the 3rd option down to "Clone a Drive...", and to copy the partition setup to the second drive (sdb)
6a. On the next screen leave sda selected on the left and select sdb on the right. Click OK. Confirm the warning by clicking the Confirm button.
6b. You'll now see 6 partitions between the two drives with each pair between the drives being the same size.
7. Hightlight the primary drive and click the RAID button again. Select the second option to "Create a Raid Device..."
We will be looping through this steps parts 3 times, one for each set of partitions (/boots, swap, and / )
There are three things to do for each partion:
set the type
set the mount point
select the two corresponding partitions on each drive
set the type of RAID (select 1 for mirroring)
7a. Lets start with the "/boot" partition:
Note: You'll see six partitions if you took the default. All the check boxes will be checked.
Uncheck everything but the two 102 MB partitions.
Set the mount point as /boot
Set the file type to ext3
Set the RAID as RAID 1
Uncheck the non participating partitions leaving only the 102 ones.
Click OK to complete that pair. You will noticed you have been returned to the view of partitions and 2 out of four are now matched.
7b. Lets continue with the "/swap" partition. Highlight the drive and click RAID again, take the 2nd Create RAID device option and complete the following:
Set the file type to Swap (that will dim out the mount point)
Set the RAID to RAID 1
Note: You'll now see just four partitions left. All four check boxes will be checked.
Select the two 2 MB partitions (or whatever the swap size is) by unchecking the other two remaining partitions.
Click OK to complete the second pair. Returning the partition list should show now 4 of 6 matched.
7c. Wrap up with the "/" partition. Hightlight the drive again and the second option as before. Complete the following:
Set the mount point to /
Set the file type to ext3
Set the RAID to RAID 1
Note: You'll now see the two remaining partitions, both should be checked.
Leave the remaining two selected.
Click OK to complete the last pair. Returning the partition list should show all 6 matched
8. In RedHat 9, I changed the boot loader to LILO. In Fedora Core 3, Grub appears to be my only option, so I took it. Hopefully it's an okay one...
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