[CentOS] raid1 custom initrd and yum

[Les Mikesell]

Sam Beam wrote:
> On Tuesday 01 April 2008 05:31, Kai Schaetzl wrote:
>> Sam Beam wrote on Tue, 1 Apr 2008 01:45:28 -0400:
>>> OK sorry to hammer the list but one more question - having almost got the
>>> drives mirrored and happy - since I have created a custom initrd that has
>>> the raid1 drivers in it, do I now have to tell yum to ignore kernel
>>> updates? Will the stock kernel render me unbootable?
>> Is this about software RAID? You don't need to change the initrd in any way
>> for this.
> 
> ok.... (deep breathing relaxation exercise in order after staying up till 4AM 
> trying different permutations)... All the howtos/posts I found on it seemed 
> to this running mkinitrd to add raid1 was needed. So you don't run it at all 
> after creating the md arrays?

If your system was installed without raid and you manually moved the / 
partition to an md device you would have to add the modules to the 
initrd yourself.  However, subsequent yum updates that install a new 
kernel should include what you need - and they should not remove your 
running kernel or the supporting initrd, so you would have a fall-back 
from the grub boot menu anyway where you could fix it.

> maybe that is why the system won't boot anymore after I synced the root 
> partition? ;)
> 
> I hope...

If you are booting a kernel that can't find your root partition, the 
initrd might be the problem.   There are several other things that also 
have to be right.  You should be able to boot your install cd/dvd with 
"linux rescue" at the boot prompt to fix any of them, so don't panic yet.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com