[mythtv-users] Linux software raid question

[John Drescher]

>Last time I "booted" on software RAID it was not really on the RAID.  There were simply 2 exactly the same partitions on both drives that >were boot.  But if you removed a drive, then you had to go into BIOS to tell it to boot from the other drive because it was not truly RAID at >that point.  Just duplicate.  Plus if you change the boot you have to remember to copy it to both drives.

>Unless the RAID driver is now somehow included in the boot manager!?

That is the point about the very small raid 1 partition where all
members have the exact same contents. Linux software raid will mirror
this partition to all drives in the array. The BIOS will see these as
individual bootabe partitions. Its propose of this is to hold just the
kernel. This allows you to not have to have an extra drive just to
boot. I do not see this as a disadvantage to software. If I was forced
to have the entire raid array at only one raid level I would still
have a small boot partition.

> I call this an advantage over hardware. I mean I get  my 256 MB boot
> and my 50GB / back under full raid level in a less than 30 minutes
> instead of waiting for hours..
>
>
> I don't wait for hours if the drive was properly shut down.  When I did
> software, that took a long time too if you did not properly shut things
> down.
>
Here I am talking about when replacing a bad drive. On software raid,
I do not see any of these shutdown problems anymore. How many times
does a linux system that is connected to a UPS not properly shut down?
For me this is a less frequently than replacing a bad drive.

John