Make a boot CD for FC4?

Mike McCarty mike.mccarty at sbcglobal.net
Fri Oct 7 19:45:26 UTC 2005


Neil Aggarwal wrote:
> Mike:
> 
> Here is what I am trying to do:
> 
> I have a SuperMicro server with 2 SATA drives.
> 
> I want to run RAID for all partitions, so I set up these devices:
> 
> /dev/md0	/boot		100MB
> /dev/md1	/		60GB
> /dev/md2	swap		2GB
> /dev/md3	/var		5GB
> 
> The install happens just fine, but when the machine reboots
> after the install, it does not load the OS.
> 
> I want to create a boot CD from rescue mode that will boot
> the fedora installed on /dev/md1

So, your goal is to boot the OS installed on /dev/md1.

*A* means of accomplishing that is to make a bootable CDROM.

Why do you want to boot /dev/md1 when your putative boot partition
is /dev/md0?

BTW, what is in /dev/md0 which you need to have redundant? Or swap?
I suppose that if swap crapped out, you'd probably crash when
the OS tried to page that part in. But /boot normally only gets
read during the actual boot. If you're using hardware RAID, then
the partitions don't matter. So I guess you must be using software
RAID. If so, then RAID isn't started up until well into the boot
anyway, so I don't see the need.

I suggest forgetting RAID on /boot at least. And try to boot from
/boot, not from your root. This alone may resolve your problems.

Do you use GRUB? If so, then I suggest making a GRUB boot floppy
and trying by hand to boot off of your /boot partition. I don't
know what possible race conditions there are trying to start RAID
on / during boot. There is very little needed in / anyway. Pretty
much just /etc is needed for boot. You could make / very tiny,
and mount everything else (like /home). This could also reduce
the number of interactions and time dependencies.

If you really, really need RAID on the entire disc, then I'd think
the best bet would be "hardware" RAID. I mean if your availability
requirements are very high, so high that they cannot be met except
through redundancy.

Mike
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