Mandrake Linux Software RAID Install Howto

This short howto explains the steps needed to create Linux Software RAID partitions during install.

Note: This guide assumes you ONLY want Linux to be installed when you're finished! It assumes you are starting with two blank disks.

You should have two identical hard drives hooked up to your system. It doesn't matter whether they are IDE, SCSI or SATA as long as the Mandrake installer can see them.

Boot from your normal boot media and follow the install until you get to the disk partitioning screen.

You should see both of your disks, as shown. This walkthrough was performed with two Virtual disks in VirtualBox, so they don't already have any partitions on them.

Here we've created a 20000 MB "Primary" partition on each disk, starting at sector #1. We've then used the remaining space on each disk for swap, although we'll RAID-1 mirror that as well.

Once you create the 4 partitions, as type "Linux RAID (0xfd)" you'll see a new button "Add To RAID" when you click on the partitions.

Add the two large partitions to "md0" as type "1" RAID (This is mirroring).

Add the two smaller partitions to "md1", again as type "1".

Then, you'll see the "raid" tab appear, which will show the two mdX devices (/dev/md0 and /dev/md1) that you create your filesystems on.

Click on the large partition and set its Mount Point to "/", then click "OK".

You'll get a warning at this point about not having a /boot partition. This warning is not valid for RAID-1 mirrored partitions. (It's valid for RAID-0 striping where you have to have a separate /boot on one of the drives).

Next, click on the small partition and set its type to "Linux SWAP".

You should end up looking at this:

After setting your RAID up, you can now proceed to format them and continue to the rest of the install

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