RH 7.1 installation on an IBM server with 3 scsi disks

[Andrew Kelly]

On Mon, 2004-03-08 at 19:15, Rick Stevens wrote:
> Andrew Kelly wrote:
> > On Fri, 2004-03-05 at 18:03, Rick Stevens wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>Again, you can't have RAID5 on a single disk.  As to whether you can
> >>install Linux on a RAID5 system, sure.  It depends on if it's a hardware
> >>or software RAID as to how to do the install.
> > 
> > 
> > Are you certain about this? 
> > Of course it's not possible to have a hardware RAID with a single disk,
> > but a single disk software RAID is completely doable. You just assign 
> > partitions as container members.
> 
> Forgive me, but what in the heck do you gain by having a RAID made up
> of a bunch of partitions on the same disk?  Unless you were doing it as
> an intellectual exercize or to familiarize yourself with the tools, you
> gain nothing.  There's no data redundancy except on the same disk and
> you sure-as-heck aren't going to get any performance enhancements (if
> anything it'll be slower).

Forgive me back, but please show me where I advocated any position
worthy of your wasting energy to bash it apart.

You said,
	"Again, you can't have RAID5 on a single disk."

You were wrong, I disagreed with you and I offered a bit of information
as to why. Harmless as all that.

> Having a RAID using partitions on one drive is about as useful as teats
> on a bull.  It shouldn't even be called RAID, but (pardon me) "RAIP"
> (redundant array of inane partitions).  The whole point of a RAID is
> to survive the death of a DRIVE.  If you start losing parts of
> partitions, you had better replace the drive PDQ (pretty damned quick).

Uh, NS (no shit).

When you're issuing a BFO (blinding flash of the obvious), it wouldn't
hurt to keep just a few things in mind.
-- Just because somebody doesn't post with a signature announcing
   their IT pedigree, doesn't mean there's reason to assume that they
   don't have opposable thumbs or can't feed themselves without an
   instruction booklet.
-- Even people who can't spell condescention can be quite irritated
   by it.
-- There's nothing wrong with being better than somebody, but feeling
   superior to somebody will generally work out poorly.
-- It is very difficult in the media of online foren, usenet newsgroups
   or interactive mailing lists not to "commit" the "crimes" just 
   mentioned. (As evidenced by my own words)

> > I piddled around with software RAID on RH 9 ages ago, just wanting 
> > to see how silly I could get. I don't remember all the details, but 
> > I remember it having suprised me a bit. I'd build a 3 "disk" RAID 5 with
> > 1 failover "disk", and then used the native tools to break it. I was
> > able to kill things off until only a single "disk" was left. 
> > I wasn't able to add "disks" and re-build the container once the RAID
> > had been crippled to a single "disk", but the data was all still accessible
> > and I was able to sucessfully backup "off site" and recover to a rebuilt
> > system.
> 
> I agree that is could be a learning experience on how to handle the
> tools, but it sure isn't practical.

No, it's not. I agree with you completely. But nobody was talking about
practicality, were they? The point was one of possibility, not
practicality.

> > The whole experience was quite positive and caused me to re-think some
> > criticsms I was developing.
> 
> Such as?

Such as, commercial distributions of Linux were pandering to new market
share by dumbing down and coloring up; that functioning, reliable
(system level) tools and the continuing development thereof were being
neglected in favor of offering something as one-click and Windows-like
as possible, so that Capitan Profit could take the helm of the frigate
MS Discontent. That commercial distributions of Linux were so falling
over themselves to attract the first time user who has just turned his
back in disgust on proprietary software, that they had begun to
disregard the user base that made them who they are.
..
Sorry, this could easily be a 12 page rant.

Products like RH 7.2 and 7.3 being followed up with dung like 8.0 are
indicative of the current mindset in the commercial Linux namespace,
IMHO. Quality is being left behind in the race for quantity, and it
sucks big time.
I was bloody pleasantly suprised to see that there are still good bits
in with the bad, that's all.

Andy