Quoting Steve Bergman steve@rueb.com:
Hi,
I have a client that insists on going with software rather than hardware raid1 to save a few dollars.
Can Centos 4.2 do Boot and Root on software Raid1?
Yes on i386. No on ia64 (partition where /boot dir is can't be on RAID-1). Don't know for x86_64 (should be).
I've heard criticisms of Grub and bootable RAID. Also, if it is not set up to work out of the box, I'd like to try to talk them out of it.
Yes, Anaconda had this long standing bug of not handling /boot on RAID-1 properly when installing Grub. With LILO it worked perfectly for a very long time out of the box. I don't know if Anaconda/Grub problem was fixed recently. Even if it wasn't it is relatively trivial to adjust grub configuration and install it on both drives.
I've been down that road before. If I go nonstandard, by the time I actually need to boot from the second drive in an emergency, I've forgotten the special procedure.
Depending on the type of failure, special procedure might not be needed. Even if it is, it is relatively trivial (and I wouldn't really call it special procedure) ;-)
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