[Bug 1028677] Re: mdadm should be used for fakeraid (instead of dmraid)

[Dmitrijs Ledkovs]

Ok. Both ubiquity and the debian-installer use a piece of software for
partitioning collectively known as partman.

Partman has many "plugins" for setting up different file systems and
things.

Partman-md is a single package which handles mdadm based RAID.

Partman-md upstream is at:
  Vcs-Browser: http://git.debian.org/?p=d-i/partman-md.git
  Vcs-Git: git://git.debian.org/d-i/partman-md.git

The actual code is bash scripts and debconf templates.

What needs doing is:
1) add a detection if external metadata is supported by the underlying disks
2) add a question to offer a choice of metadata formats: e.g. internal (1.2/1.1/1.0/0.9), external (ISMS, DDF)
3) modify the partitioning to use the correct/requested metadata format.

The patch will be small and fairly straight-forward, after you
understand how all the different run-parts scripts work together with
debconf. You will find more information from
http://wiki.debian.org/Installer

I do not have access to ISMS/DDF hard-drives, therefore I cannot
develop&test such patch.

If you develop such a patch I will be happy to review it and push it
into Debian and Ubuntu.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1028677

Title:
  mdadm should be used for fakeraid (instead of dmraid)

Status in “debian-installer” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in “mdadm” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in “partman-md” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in “ubiquity” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  mdadm now support external metadata and can hadle fakeraid better than dmraid:
  https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID_setup#External_Metadata
  http://download.intel.com/design/intarch/PAPERS/326024.pdf

  It seems that dmraid is no more developed (only maintenance), so
  ubuntu should use mdadm instead of dmraid for fakeraid.

  Actually, it's not possible to setup a new ubuntu install with mdadm
  fakeraid (tried 12.04 and 12.10 alpha 2 alternate cd): only dmraid is
  offered.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
  Package: mdadm (not installed)
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-23.39-generic 3.0.36
  Uname: Linux 3.0.0-23-generic i686
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Wed Jul 25 00:45:56 2012
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release i386 (20111011)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US:en
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: mdadm
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2012-07-07 (17 days ago)

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