10.04.1 LTS install with RAID support?

[Tom H]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Steve Malenfant <smalenfant at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 12:11 PM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 12:06 PM, Steve Malenfant <smalenfant at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 11:47 AM, Alan Pope <popey at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> >> On 28 January 2011 14:38, Steve Malenfant <smalenfant at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >> > Not yet. The problem is that I don't have any writable CD anymore.
>> >>
>> >> I specifically meant use the netinst ISO on a usb stick using
>> >> unetbootin. I used this last week, and believe you won't get the CD
>> >> mount issue because the mini/netinst iso doesn't grab packages from a
>> >> local CD repo but from online.
>> >>
>> >> But it looks like you're sorted now :)
>> >>
>> > Sorted, not really. I believe my main problem is that these drives had
>> > already an Soft RAID config on them. I'm trying to re-purpose them. But
>> > the
>> > installation can't remove the RAID configuration. It would be nice to
>> > have
>> > an option to remove all RAID partitioning before the partitioning
>> > happen.
>> > Anyway, I tried removing that stuff with Gparted... failed. mdadm
>> > --zero-superblock fails. So.. waiting for the long dd -if=/dev/zero on
>> > them
>> > and hopefully this md2 array won't show up on next install!
>> > Is this supposed to be that complicated?
>>
>> There's no reason why
>> mdadm --zero-superblock <every_mdadm_partition>
>> wouldn't work.
>>
>> It's definitely the way to go.
>>
> I thought it was too.. But there is something you guys didn't know (I didn't
> either!). Well.. I tried fakeraid with the nvidia MCP... Well, it wrote
> something on there which dmraid detected... It asked me during the
> installation if I wanted to load the "SATA RAID". Of course I said "no". But
> the install detected it anyway. So, to remove you have to do "dmraid -rE".
> Just something I tried from other forums... Then it told me : Do you want to
> remove the tag nvidia blabla bla... That's where I knew that Nvidia RAID was
> interfering even after being disabled.
> I'm not out of the woods yet. I created my partitions manually on both
> drives but the "Configure software RAID" won't bring up my MD RAID1
> partition to assign the "/" partition and doesn't show anywhere. I'll try
> another reboot for that.

"There's no reason..."! :)

When you referred to "Soft RAID" I assumed mdraid not dmraid...

There apparently is: dmraid's involved.

The latest installers are pretty aggressive in using dmraid because
dmraid support's been bad in the past...

dmraid's got a command similar to mdadm's "--zero-superblock";
"--erase-metadata"? (IIRC!)

mdadm can now manage dmraid arrays but I guess not to the extent of
zeroing metadata.

I'm downloading a server iso to install it in a VM because I don't
understand why you couldn't set up mdraid through the installer - and
I don;t see why you have to reboot for an mdraid array to be
recognized by d-i.