alternate (RAID1) install

[James]

Rashkae <ubuntu <at> tigershaunt.com> writes:


> On a reasonably well tuned system, Swap should almost only be used to 
> quietly swap out (and sometimes in) rarely used bits of memory in the 
> background.  If your page file is being hit so hard that performance if 
> even an issue, you have another problem that needs fixing with either 
> $20 of memory and/or some adjustment of the 'swapinness' knob.

You are correct, from the multitude knowlegable folks I have 
talked to.

In fact for my needs, it's going to be a all RAID1 install
2 identical 2TB disks with only boot / and swap. If you do
not set up the swap as raid1, a failure therein will being the
workstation down. Besides, swap performance on a properly configured
workstation is not a significant issue; i.e. it is only used when
installing large packages or working on files larger than the
ram capacity, mostly. Occationally, poorly design software 
hogs ram and thus depends too much on swap.

I'm new to Ubuntu, not Linux (old Gentooer). Gentoo's documentation
for Grub-2, GPT, mdadm, etc etc, sucks and is massively out of
date. I'm looking to use Ubuntu to discover a direct, well documented
path to setting up many workstations with boot/root/swap on dual
HD all with RAID1 one. In this day and age, such should be automated
or a custom install iso, methinks.

Lots of gentoo folks use raid, nobody wants to clean up the
documentation in lieu of the recent changes on to setting up raid.

Ubuntu's alternate-11.10.iso, which I believe is the only media to set up
a raid1 workstation, defaults to a single partition and is mostly
geared to putting the RAID1 workstation onto an existing system
and just using one (dual) partition for the raid 1. Then again,
I'm new to Ubuntu so I'm sure I do not know all of the installation
nuances for what I need...


Many smart (gentoo) users have said to just use the ubuntu install
first and then put Gentoo over ubuntu; so that is what I'm doing.

However, since I find lots of nice documentation on Ubuntu
(I particularly like the Ubuntu.serverguide.pdf)
I think I'm going to play around with Ubuntu and maybe
build a RAID1 workstation and a few servers suggested in the 
aforementioned doc, and note the performance and ease of management issue.

Gentoo sucks on installation, but is fabulous on maintenance
and customization.  Using gpt, grub2, etc etc on Gentoo is difficult
because there is not decent documentation.

Ubuntu, just may have a place in my humble network..
(as a side note, I see many folks form gentoo, in your
archives...)

James