Re: Bootable RAID system
I keep waffling back and forth between RAID1 (mirroring) and RAID5. And I keep waffling between booting from RAID or not. Part of the problem is that to boot off raid, you need to build a intrd image, and since I do a bunch of kernel compiles and reboots all the time (say once a week or so...) I've been a bit leary of all that.
I've done software RAID (RAID0 and RAID5) for a long time and never had to use an initrd image. Just have a 100 MB boot partition on one drive, and set root=/dev/md0 in grub. This is with two 60GB WD HD's and one 80 GB (which has the bootable 100 MB partition). If you RAID it all, well, guess you need an initrd (please correct me if I'm wrong). As far as RAID1 and RAID5, isn't RAID5 strictly better, if you have the HD's? I mean, just lose 1/3 of the storage for total mirroring and you have to lose 2 HD's to lose your data. Why would someone choose RAID1 over RAID5 (just curious)? I did have a RAID5 system set up, but decided to change it over to RAID0 and use an external Maxtor drive for backup (just simple rsync).
Now that would be a good meeting some evening, talking about and showing how to setup a bootable RAID system for the OS and how to upgrade your kernel easily and automatically.
Personally, I feel if you compile a couple of kernels it really becomes old hat, I mean, once you know how to do it it's no big deal. Same with RAID systems. But that would be an interesting meeting, nonetheless.
Let me rephrase your reasoning: You don't want to use an initrd because you aren't familiar with the process. Just because you do a lot of kernel builds/reboots (and your definition of a lot is my definition of very few, here), that is no reason not to use an initrd.
I've never had a problem and found I needed initrd to get something to work. What are the benefits of using it? - Carlton