Ubuntu Installation :: Setting Up FakeRAID On An Existing System?
Aug 12, 2010
I have 2 750GB harddrives with multiple NTFS and ext3 partitions and have just added two empty 1.5TB drives (with WD Advanced Format Technology) to the computer. I have several external drives of various capacities for temporary data storage. My final objective is to have two mirrored RAID arrays that I can access with both Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows Vista (which I still need for applications that aren't supported by WINE), and I'm trying to find out how to do this.
At the moment, the 1.5TB disks are mirrored in the BIOS settings, and I was able to add a blank NTFS partition to the array using GParted. However, I am now unable to mount any of my partitions (other than the Ubuntu one) and cannot use GParted to copy a partition to the RAID array (I get a generic resource in use message, but I have no other applications open and am opening GParted after a fresh boot).
My Ubuntu install is heavily customized, so I would prefer not to reinstall it if at all possible. If it matters, the OS was not installed as 10.04, but was updated incrementally over time, starting at Hardy Heron. I initially did an apt-get install of dmraid and kpartx after reading [URL]
For some reason, my 750GB drives are recognized as belonging to a broken RAID array even though they are not set up that way in BIOS.
HD configuration:
sda: (I cannot mount any of these partitions )
1: ext3 (Debian Installation)
2: ntfs (Vista Installation)
3: ntfs (Data)
I am starting to have lots of unusual problems show up on my Ubuntu 10.04 install, missing Icons for the Volume Slider, Email Icon, and a Error mounting Static on startup (because I plugged in my Smartdisk FDUSB-TM2 Mitsumi Model #: D353FUE) and it is trying to mount as SDC instead of as a USB Floppy Drive.....and it DOES NOT work as a USB Floppy Drive on 10.04.REF:[URL] I have my system set up as follows:
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
[code]....
If I boot from the LiveCD again, and Install again from the LiveCD, will all my installed software still be functional, or will I have to re-install, and repeat everything I have done to build my system to date since my system is on / and is a separate partition?
I'm trying to do a simple install. Wipe out existing system and replace with 11.04 but I can't get past initial screen. Is there a different CD version I need to use? Last year I used 10.04 LTS and it worked fine, this year I wanted to start with the newest and go from there. I use Remastersys to make my own install version for 600+ laptops and I need to be able to wipe out the existing systems without effort.
I've read many of the postings on ICH10R and grub but none seem to give me the info I need. Here's the situation: I've got an existing server on which I was running my RAID1 pair boot/root drive on an LSI based RAID chip; however there are system design issues I won't bore you with that mean I need to shift this RAID pair to the fakeraid (which happens to most reliably come up sda, etc). So far I've been able to configure the fakeraid pair as 'Adaptec' and build the RAID1 mirror with new drives; it shows up just fine in the BIOS where I want it.
Using a pre-prepared 'rescue' disk with lots of space, I dd'd the partitions from the old RAID device; then I rewired things, rebooted, fired up dmraid -ay and got the /dev/mapper/ddf1_SYS device. Using cfdisk, I set up three extended partitions to match the ones on the old RAID; mounted them; loopback mounted the images of the old partitions; then used rsync -aHAX to dup the system and home to the new RAID1 partitions. I then edited the /etc/fstab to change the UUID's; likewise the grub/menu.list (This is an older system that does not have the horror that is grub2 installed) I've taken a look at the existing initrd and believe it is all set up to deal with dmraid at boot. So that leaves only the grub install. Paranoid that I am, I tried to deal with this:
dmraid -ay mount /dev/mapper/ddf1_SYS5 /newsys cd /newsys
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and I get messages about 'does not have any corresponding BIOS drive'. I tried editing grub/device.conf, tried --recheck and any thing else I could think of, to no avail. I have not tried dd'ing an mbr to sector 0 yet as I am not really sure whether that will kill info set up by the fakeraid in the BIOS. I might also add that the two constituent drives show up as /dev/sda and /dev/sdb and trying to use either of those directly results in the same error messages from grub. Obviously this sort of thing is in the category of 'kids don't try this at home', but I have more than once manually put a unix disk together one file at a time, so much of the magic is not new to me.
I have recently installed Fedora 10 in my x86_64 system and fully updated. The updation size was nearly 650MB. My question is can I make a an updated installer DVD from my existing fedora system?
I've had such good luck with Fedora (and this Forum), I'm attempting to put F12 on wife's brand new Sony Vaio, a VPCEB11FM, a 64bit system. I downloaded the Fedora-12-x86_64-netinst.iso, made sure it was ok with sha256.exe, then burned the image to DVD. Booted it up and let it default to "install or upgrade an existing system". It dead-ended in a dark blue or black screen. I re-started and examined the other options. Thought I'd try the one that says: "Install system with basic video driver". Got all the way through to where it got ready to start downloading files. Can't get past that point because it attempts to get to the Internet using the Sony's wireless card! Why would it try the wireless when there's a wired NIC card in this PC that requires no special driver etc. How to proceed from here?
My motherboard has a BIOS feature to support RAID1 for two disks. I know it's FakeRAID but that's what Windows can work with. I've read that Linux's built in softraid mdadm is better so I'd prefer to use that for Linux's own filesystems. Can I enable FakeRAID in the BIOS without it affecting Linux in any way? Is it possible for Ubuntu to read and/or write to the NTFS partition that's raided with the fakeraid?
Also, if running mdadm in RAID 1 how much risk is there of losing data if the computer crashes? Is e2fsck able to repair a filesystem on a RAID 1 setup?
I wanted to install Ubuntu 11.04 on my pc (dual boot with windows xp which is already installed on one disk). I have a Asus P5K pro (motherboard) which has a integrated raid controller and i have two 500 GB hard disks. On BIOS raid is disabled. On Windows i see 2 different disks (correctly).. When i try to install Ubuntu, on the disk/partition stagei only see /dev/mapper/xxxxxx which should be the raid (i could be wrong). I tried booting inserting the nodmraid option but if i do i cannot see any disk.
I've used gconf-editor to disable the "show_desktop" feature of Nautilus to get multiple wallpapers to work, but now want my icons back. But I can't:
Code:
warnec@lucidL:~$ LANG=C sudo gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop 'true' Error setting value: Can't overwrite existing read-only value: Value for `/apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop' set in a read-only source at the front of your configuration path
It does neither work with gconf-editor. It says this key is "protected from writing"
I continue to have issues installing any of the newer version of Ubuntu on my ICH9 FAKERAID. I read that the GRUB2 issue with FAKERAID was solved shortly after Karmic was released. Did this somehow not get added to the Alpha 1 and Alpha 2 of Lucid? I would love to have Ubuntu installed on my main rig, but I do not want to fuss around with it forever...
About a year ago I bought a new compy and decided to get on-motherboard RAID, and by golly I was gonna use it, even if it wasn't worth it.
Well, after one year, two upgrades, a lot of random problems dealing with RAID support, and a lot of articles read, I have come to my senses.
The problem: I have a fakeraid using dmraid, RAID 1, two SATA harddrives. They are mirrors of eachother, including separate home and root partitions. I actually found the method I think I had used here: [URL]
The ideal solution: No need to reinstall, no need of another drive, no need to format.
My last resort: Buy a drive, copy my home directory, start from scratch, copy my stuff over.
I'm looking to shrink my windows partition on a raid0 array and create a mdadm ubuntu partition using raid0. Is this possible? can I just ignore the /dev/mapper device and use the standard /dev/sdx devices?
I had done a new lucid install to a 1 TB RAID 1 array using the alternate CD a few weeks back. I messed up that system trying to some hardware working that lucid doesn't have drivers for yet, so I gave up on it and reinstalled to a single 80 GB disk that I now want to move over to the RAID array.
I moved all of the existing files on the array to a single folder, then copied all of the folders from the 80 GB disk over to the array with permissions and symlinks (minus the contents of /proc and /sys, which I created empty).
These are the commands I used:
Quote:
p -a -d -R -v -t /media/raid_array /b* cp -a -d -R -v -t /media/raid_array /d* cp -a -d -R -v -t /media/raid_array /e* cp -a -d -R -v -t /media/raid_array /h*
[Code]....
I tried to change fstab to use the 689a... for root, but when I try to boot, it's still trying to open /dev/disk/by-uuid/412d...
So then I booted from the single disk again and chrooted into the array, then ran update-initramfs -u. I got 3 "grep: /proc/modules: No such file or directory" errors, and "cat: /proc/cmdline: No such file or directory"- so I created directory /proc/modules, created an empty file /proc/cmdline, and ran the initramfs update again. Then I tried to shut down, which hung (probably because I was doing all of this from a terminal window in Gnome), so I killed the power after a couple of minutes.
It's still trying to use /dev/disk/by-uuid/412d... to boot.
What am I missing? I assume I just have to change the UUID to mount as root, but I don't know how.
I had some problems with ububtu because it doesn't work very well with Intel cards. Anyway I've downloaded Fedora 11 and Now i am using it without installation. I'd like to install it over ubuntu I have to choose this option right ? "replace existing using system"?
I am having a prolbem with my ubuntu 9.10 operating system. Is there anyway I can roll back the setting and files that I deleted previously without totaly reinstalling the system.
i tried installing windows 7 on a partition on my laptop but i'm getting this message:"setup was unable to create a new partition or locate an existing system partition "i tried googling and found that it has something to do with the number of partitions:my hard disk layout right now:
I have recently installed Ubuntu 10.04.1 lts server on my Intel "fakeraid" (software raid) (2x250 sata).To test my RAID 1 I turned off one HD and start the system.The first screen (Intel software screen) show Status = Degraded, but the system starts normally with just one HD.Then I turned off the system and turned on the HD again, so the first screen (Intel software screen) shows Status = Rebuild. If I enter in the software raid panel the folowing message is showed: "Volumes with "Rebuild" status will be rebuilt within the operating system"The system starts normally... but this message status stays permanently even I restart the system again
I want to move my windows XP image from my old PC's C: and put it onto my new PC, with Ubuntu 9.10 already on it. Will this procedure work?First I'll burn an iso image of the windows C: to a CD or DVD, using the Win XP computer. Then, I'll load a (live Ubuntu), from my thumb drive and boot into my new PC, and move the Ubuntu partition to another location, in order to create the partition needed to install a Windows OS. I know that Windows, God bless them, needs to be first on the HDD. This procedure will destroy the grub loader.Then rebooting should load correctly to the grub bootloader, right?
I have just recently installed Ubuntu Server 10.10 32-bit onto an old Gateway Solo 5300 laptop to run as a test server. Since I want it to use all of the disk space, how do I remove the other OS and its existing programs.
I have a 120GB HD that I installed my linux-mint distro to and have been using for a while now, maybe a year or so. However, it has been running great so I haven't paid much attention to the actual install. Recently, I have been getting notifications of very low disk space remaining. I ran gparted and discovered that there is a very large extended partition that doesn't appear to be mounted. Can I just boot into a terminal, set a mount point and be on my way or will this hurt my existing installation? What is the safest set of steps to mount this partition since it looks to be the swap space as well?
Code: Here is output of fdisk for the drive: Disk /dev/sdb: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14946 cylinders
I want to move my "currently installed Debian and its all settings" to a USB flash drive. I am wondering what methods are available out there. I looked into Remastersys but it failed on my system so I am wondering if there is another method available?
I have a lenny system up and running, my CF-card reader is supported and I can mount a 1GB card. My PC _can_ boot from CF cards, I verified... My Linux resides in sda3 (other partition is XP). How would I transfer the partition to a cf card? I tried using dd if=/dev/sda3 of=/dev/sdb1, but as that doesnt work I have the feeling there's more to do... Maybe install GRUB on the CF-Card? Change some paths after copying?
I have an existing Fedora 15 system installed from scratch.I've ordered a harddrive identical to my SDA and want to add it to my existing system as a RAID1 setup.I've googled around and cannot find recent clear instructions how to accomplish this. I don't want to reinstall everything from scratch. It should be possible to create the RAID1 using the existing data disk and then mirror everything up?
In the near future I will be obliged to change my computer. Currently, my system is OpenSuse 11.2 with KDE 4.5.3 on a dual-boot (with WinVista) laptop. I plan to have the new machine again be dual-boot (Win7).
First question: Is there a way to "describe" the current system in a way that, after the initial partitioning and probably a basic installation of OpenSuse 11.2, makes it easy to reproduce the current OpenSuse 11.2 installation (i.e., installed packages, profiles; more?) on the new machine? This would reduce manual work to copying some system files (e.g., /etc/csh.cshrc and similar) and of course /home/username etc.
Second question: Same as first, but this time with a change to OpenSuse 11.3 or the soon to come OpenSuse 11.4. A potential initial installation of OpenSuse 11.2 would be possible.
I am trying to migrate my existing system with one IDE disk , tools installation already done... without loosing informations and having to install once again every things, to RAID1 (soft) with a second IDE disk I tried to do this using somme informations given on forums but i always have a kernel Panic at the end of boot What I did:
The system is going down for system halt NOW! login as: root root's password: /usr/bin/xauth: creating new authority file /root/.Xauthority
After lots of trouble with the new Nvidia stuff in Fedora 12 I gave up and am trying to switch to an ATI Radeon 4350 card in the existing system.I have removed the Nvidia refs with rpm -e, deleted /etc/X11/xorg*, and installed the card. I am only able to get a maximum resolution of 1024x768. Here's what I've done:
Boot and su/delete all refs: /etc/X11/xorg* Reboot. System comes up with 1024x768 Select Administration->Display to run system-config-display. Su/password dialogue
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If I try to add a mode line following Depth 24, It is ignored by system-config-display and overwritten. This worked with the Nvidia installation and I was able to select my resolution above 1024x768.
I have a running RHEL5 system, which has two physical disk drives, but is currently running on a single drive of the pair. The single drive the system is running on contains a root/boot partition and a swap partition. I would like to be able to add a mirror drive to this existing setup without having to disturb the running system (much). That is, I don't want to have to completely dump, reinstall (creating the mirror on the way up), and reload from backup media if I can avoid it. I have seen procedures that go as follows:
- the "extra drive" (the one not being used as the current root/boot device) is first brought under LVM control as a root object with one physical mirror attached.
- the data from the running root/boot drive is rsync-ed over to the LVM-controlled half-mirror, and boot records added.
- System rebooted on newly created half-mirror.
- Original root prepped to be second side of LVM mirrored root, and is added in.
Can one boot from an LVM disk directly? There seems to be some question on this that came up in other lists I had read online.
