debiandude
07-08-2001, 12:21 PM
I want to put RAID support on my computer. I already have to SCSI drives on my system and was thinking about adding another so that I could run them in RAID 5. I heard that adaptec has good Linux support for their SCSI cards and assummed this was true for their RAID controller cards as well. It is and they offer drivers, but their drivers are not incorporated in the kernel yet. So my question is how can I install linux with on my computer if I put the driver on the RAID card. And if I can't is their anyway I can get this card to work, (they have a driver to use during a RedHat installation but I really really prefer Debian, so redhat isn't an option).
There are few options for actual hardware RAID support under Linux at the moment, so you'll want to run Software RAID instead.
Software RAID, IMHO is very easy to get running under Linux, I suppose I should write some sort of NHF on it, since it's a frequently posted question. The basics:
Read the RAID FAQ (http://linuxdoc.org/FAQ/Linux-RAID-FAQ/index.html) and Software RAID HOWTO (http://linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html).
Patch the kernel as necessary, download and install the new raidtools.
Compile the new kernel with the appropriate RAID level, reboot and create your RAID device (assumes you have space on at least two hdd's for a RAID device and know how to partition the drives accordingly).
Copy over your original install to the newly created RAID device and reboot. There are options for RH users to actually install onto RAID, but none that I'm aware of for any other distro. I was working on a RAID install for Slack and Debian but I've since been too busy to do anything with it...