RedShift wrote:
RedShift wrote:
Hello
Since linux 2.6, the md layer has a feature called partitionable arrays. So instead of having two disks, creating an identical partition table on both and then putting those partitions in RAID 1, you take those two disks and put them in one partitionable RAID 1 array (in mdadm terms, "mdp") and create a partition table on the new RAID device. The advantages are quite clear compared to the old non-partitionable arrays.
My question is, is this supported by CentOS? The GTK installer doesn't provide a way to create such an mdp device and the integrated partitioning tool does not see for example md_d0 when I create it manually from the console.
I expect we may have to wait on upstream to have installer support. Anybody with RHEL want to put in an official request?
Another way to get CentOS on such a configuration would be to do everything manually, thus installing the base system by creating the necessary disk allocations and then rpm -i all the required packages to get it to boot. (I've done this before, it's not a big deal, you just need to follow a certain order - I remember documenting it somewhere but forgot). But since this method is probably not officially documented anywhere or even supported I'll most likely won't get any support if this setup were to fail somehow (like when upgrading between minor versions).
I've tried STFW'ing, but searching for centos and partitionable arrays is too ambiguous.
I tried googling too, and came up with lots of docs on "partitionable arrays", but nothing on installing. Can't say for sure without testing, but I suspect GRUB would choke on this. Would probably still need at least a /boot on a separate partition, or a standard RAID1.
Thanks,
Best regards,
Glenn Matthys
As a follow-up, I found the documentation I wrote how to install CentOS without any installer:
# First, setup your disks to your liking. You can use whatever you want here,
... snip ...
(PS: I've also attached the documentation as install_centos.txt, but mailman will probably strip it)
Attachment came through fine for me. Very interesting - might make a nice Wiki article, and could be included on a LiveCD as a way of bootstrapping a CentOS install.
Phil