[CentOS] Centos 4.2 and Boot/Root on RAID?

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Quoting Steve Bergman <steve at 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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