On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:17:49 +0100 Dieter Plaetinck <dieter@plaetinck.be> wrote:
On Thu, 14 Jan 2010 00:07:18 +0100 Alexander Duscheleit <jinks@archlinux.us> wrote:
Would it be possible to just generate the relevant mdadm.conf during the configure stage without providing further additional support? People are used to run installation steps in sequence so this would eliminate on source of (apparently frustrating) user error.
A quick look at AIF's source suggest prefill_configs () as proper place. I'm not certain, how AIF identifies used block devices, but something like this would probably suffice:
if md[0-9] in $BLOCKDEVICES -> mdadm --detail --scan >> ${var_TARGET_DIR}/etc/mdadm.conf
hmm. that seems simple enough. why not? what do you mean with $BLOCKDEVICES ? all blockdevices in the system? or blockdevices explicitly configured to be partionened by user? or blockdevices explicitly configured to be used for formatting by user?
I meant the block devices the user selected to be mounted (regardless of formatting), so, what AIF puts in fstab mostly. If a user wants to access a softraid from arch, he probably needs a mdadm.conf and it wont hurt either way.
If the official installation guide states otherwise, we should fix that. please point me to the mistake/file a ticket. If community-maintained documentation is incorrect, fix it yourself.
The official istall guide specifically states that you are on your own with softraid. The raid/lvm/etc wiki article is a bit twisted in it's mix-and-match of methods, I shall have another look if I can squeeze the relevant information in there.
the better the support in AIF gets, the smaller such articles can become.
I hurled a few chunks around, so at least the guide doesn't end up in an unbootable system any more.
Patches to support softraid are always welcome. Things don't get improved by merely hoping for it. http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/14149
WONTFIX! This is already far too easy :)
Assuming the user does the heavy work (creating the MD volumes), what are the other (little) tasks that AIF can implement to limit the amount of manual work?
- modprobe raid{1,2,3,4,5,6} ?
Should already be done by the for creating the arrays.
- rewriting the mdadm.conf if needed (see above) This can be done pretty indiscriminately. The conf doesn't really hurt when it's not needed. - for a root filesystem which needs raid, add raid to HOOKS in mkinitcpio.conf [where order is very important when combined with lvm/dm_crypt etc] ?
Should be after "pata scsi sata" but before /lvm/encrypt/filesystems in most cases. But this is not guaranteed to be safe. You could, after all, stripe two LVs into a raid. Also, you can mix-and-match block devices in so many ways: lvm on raid on encrypted partitions, lvm on encrypted raid on normal partitions, encrypted lvm on raid on normal disks, you could even encrypt each layer separately. So I guess HOOK handling should be left to the user except when the outcome is clear to be what we want (think premade recipes).
anything else i'm missing?
As I said, don;t go too easy on us. Where is the sense of accomplishment when you can install arch manually in under 5 minutes? Not to speak of fully automatic recpies.
Dieter
Jinks --