[geeks] Linux software RAID question

[The Renaissance Man]

On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 10:05:29PM -0500, Bill Bradford wrote:
> (Specifically, RHEL3 / CentOS3.1)
> 
> I'd originally planned on installing this system with mirrored 80G drives
> (software RAID).  However, the vendor accidentally shipped with a single
> drive.  They're correcting the problem, but the additional drive won't
> be here till Saturday or Monday.
> 
> Is it possible to change a RHEL install to software RAID (mirrored /boot,
> /, etc) *after* install?  I have to get this machine in service this
> weekend whether it has dual drives or not.
> 
> I've just never touched software RAID on Linux before.


Sure.  install the second disk; create a single-drive mirror on it; copy
the boot disk to the mirror; fsck the mirror; set up all fstab entries
on the mirror to the appropriate metadevices; set up the machine to boot
from the mirror; reboot; add the original bootdisk as a second submirror
and wait for it to sync.

mdadm is an excellent tool for this purpose.



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