On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Phillip Smith <arch-general@fukawi2.nl> wrote:
I guess I will just explain what I am doing in detail. If anyone can please take some time and review my steps in accordance to what you know to be successful, please let me know. I am so badly trying to get this working on Arch.
1. Boot from the 2009.08 Netinst / Live CD
2. Login as root (no password) in the live environment
3. Add the required modules for RAID by running the following commands: - modprobe raid0 - modprobe raid1 - modprobe raid5
Everything you've written here looks correct -- except no need to load the raid0 and raid5 modules if you're not going to use them. I doubt they will be interfering, but you never know.
You should be able to install GRUB either way, I don't think it will matter. Could you share your /boot/grub/menu.lst list file with us?
Thanks for looking all that info over. I know it's a lot but I have become obsessed with getting RAID working. I could understand if I was having these issues trying to mirror my /boot and even maybe / partition but I am simply attempting my /home which to my understanding hardly impacts the system from booting into the kernel or anything of that nature. I didn't think I really needed to load the raid0 & raid5 modules before I start the disk partitioning however at this point I am so confused as to why this was not working, I didn't want to risk over looking something simply as that. At the point of writing this email, I have started the install process over again and have basically so far done the following: - booted from Live / Netinst 2009.08 CD. - loaded raid1 modiles via "modprobe raid1". - user 'cfdisk' utility to partition /dev/sda & /dev/sdb. - created the RAID 1 mirror partition which will be assigned to /home mount point. - I allowed the RAID1 mirror to even finish synchronizing before moving forward (even though the Wiki indicates that I can move forward during the sync process) # cat /proc/mdstat Personalities : [raid1] md0 : active raid1 sdb3[1] sda3[0] 650568128 blocks [2/2] [UU] unused devices: <none> - I removed the default /etc/mdadm.conf file after I created my RAID1 partition and updated it with my current RAID1 configuration. # cat /etc/mdadm.conf ARRAY /dev/md0 level=raid1 num-devices=2 metadata=0.90 UUID=[snip] - run /arch/setup - configure network, mirrors, & disks. - install base packages Now I am to the point on the install where I need to 'Configure System' after the 'Package Selection' menu. - I basically leave the 'rc.conf' file alone. I leave the default 'hostname' since I don't care about that right now and by default 'LVM=no' since I am not using LVM, just RAID. - I check out my /etc/fstab configuration and I have exactly what you see below (minus anything that was commented out) none /dev/pts devpts defaults 0 0 none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0 /dev/md0 /home ext3 defaults 0 1 /dev/sda1 /boot ext3 defaults 0 1 /dev/sda2 / ext3 defaults 0 1 /dev/sdb1 swap swap defaults 0 0 /dev/sdb2 /etc ext3 defaults 0 1 Everything on top looks fine to me except I don't know what the first two entries are but everything below that point is exactly how I formated and partition the two disks on my system. I then edit the 'mkinitcpio.conf' file. Here I only add 'mdadm' to 'HOOKS' list as shown below: HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata mdadm filesystems" Everything else except HOOKS in that file from what I can see is either blank or commented out completely. I then continue with the 'System Configuration' menu: - Skip '/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf' - Configure '/etc/resolv.conf' - Configure '/etc/hosts*' - Skip /etc/locale.gen - Skip /etc pacman.conf - Skip /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist - Set root password - DONE It then rebuilds initcpio images and I can see it's using the 'mdadm' hook I added in the config. Now it's time for option 7 'Install Bootlader' - I select Grub. - It tells me, "Before installing GRUB, you must review the config file. You will be put into the editor. After you save your changes and exit the editor, you can install Grub. BELOW is the config file it presents me: ################################################################## timeout 5 default 0 color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue # (0) Arch Linux title Arch Linux root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uid/2fbe575b-7fef-4350-9398-d69c3d550de2 ro initrd /kernel26.img # (1) Arch Linux title Arch Linux Fallback root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uid/2fbe575b-7fef-4350-9398-d69c3d550de2 ro initrd /kernel26-fallback.img ################################################################## That looks fine to me I guess but I don't really know too much about GRUB. Once I exit 'vi' from the Grub config. I am asked where to load the Grub bootloader. The first option is /dev/sda and I select that for the MBR rather than /dev/sdb, /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, /dev/sdb1, /dev/sdb2, /dev/md0. I get a message "GRUB was successfully installed" and press OK. I exit install and press reboot as prompted. When the system reboots, GRUB loads fine and I select the default option and then I get a bunch of flowing text on the screen and here is what I can see as maybe being valuable: :: Initramfs Completed - control passing to kinit IP-Config: no devices to configure Waiting 0 s before mounting root device... kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds EXT3-fs: mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly. INIT: version 2.86 booting INIT: No initab file found Enter runlevel: Sadly my keyboard is not working anymore after I select my Grub option from the reboot. Any thoughts?