[arch-general] Installing Arch Linux w/ RAID

[Carlos Williams]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 6:04 PM, Phillip Smith <arch-general at fukawi2.nl> wrote:
> I've installed on RAID several times in the last week (diagnosing hardware
> problems!) and everytime after I installed, I had to boot the LiveCD and
> re-run `mkinitcpio -p kernel26` before the system would boot...

When I fist asked why I don't see an option for Arch to configure RAID
after I partition my system like I do on most popular distributions
like CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc etc etc, I was told that
"Arch does not hold your hand" which is fine. I liked the challenge of
using the CLI to build my RAID partition & using 'mdadm' to build /
activate the RAID1 mirror but after the last 3 weeks trying to follow
the Wiki and forum advice, it appears that the Arch approach is
extremely poor. The Wiki has great info but they mix the RAID / LVM
info into all one so people who just want to mirror two or three
drives get really confused with the LVM instructions randomly placed
into RAID Wiki. The installer from the LiveCD / Netinst CD is very
straight forward and extremely easy to configure. I am not a Linux
newbie but I am very surprised that a distro which appears to be as
popular and mature as Arch can't fix something as basic as RAID
configuration. Everyone has noted that they had to do some kind of
strange modification to get their RAID install to work. This looks
really bad for me because I don't want to have to rig a system to work
especially after I just installed it. It should just work. I hope
someone sees this as a constructive comment and not a flame and feels
its worth a fix. I would love to see the ability to get a Arch Linux
RAID system going a bit more user friendly. I am not asking the
configuration to hold my hand but for crying out loud...work out the
box with out having to mod anything.