I’m current trying to create my own NAS box with Owncloud, plex, etc. My plan was to have RAID 5 for "/’ and RAID 1 for “/boot” so that I would have redundancy in case my drive with boot failed. I’ve succefully done this with fedora and ubuntu but, for some reason I cannot get Opensuse to work.
heres what I’ve done so far…
/boot on raid 1 and / on raid 5 -failed -error ext2 cant be use reclamation which is needed for raid
/boot on /dev/sda1 and /boot on raid 5, then dd if=/dev/sda1 to both /dev/sdb1 & /dev/sdc1 – failed when disk SDA is removed system fails to boot
installed boot loaders on /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 and “/” on raid 5 -failed -error /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 no longer exist & Live system fails to copy during installation
I’ve done all of the above for both Opensuse 13.1 and 12.4, and I’ve done all the scenarios that I can of… any help would greatly appreciated as I’m really at end of my rope on ideas
I assume software RAID. Not real clear on why you would want to mix RAID models. Also why ext2 why not ext4. Boot is only accessed during boot and there are few writes. The few microseconds you save by not having a journal would not ever be noticed and not worth the sweat to make ext2 work.
Note with software RAID MBR is not replicated so each drive that may boot has to have boot code in mbr Also the BIOS fall over has to make sense so if a disk does not show up it falls to the correct next disk to try.
All so note that RAID is not backup. You still need to backup if your data has any value. RAID increases up time if there is a drive failure. It does not protect your data.
I’m a Linux Noob so bare with me, my goal was to have my computer set that no matter what drive crashed. My computer would still boot into GUI and allow me fix the degraded raid barring 2 drive failures
Today I wiped my system and reinstalled in RAID 5 only.So here’s my scenario…
I have 3 Disk’s A,B,C. With the Opensuse installer I created a raid 5 set it as ext4 and mounted it as "/. " I then went into the boot partion and set it to to boot for root. No problem here, Opensuse boots up fine. I’ve let the raid build over the past few hours so its 100% …
My problem is that when I tested my system by removing one of the drives ( I power off the computer and remove the HD) to simulate the drive crashing. My computer will not get past the “The operating system is missing, please enter any key” if drive “A” is removed. My other drives cause no issue, system boots just fine, with a degraded raid.
How do I fix this? I dont like the idea that if Drive A were to crash that my computer would no longer boot into opensuse!
In the past with Ubuntu, and Fedora I just set my /boot as a Raid 1 and DD if= my drive “A” to B and C. No matter what drive I were to remove the system would boot, into GUI and would allow me to fix the degraded array…
/boot on RAID1 is supported. Please attach screenshot of exact error message you get.
In the past with Ubuntu, and Fedora I just set my /boot as a Raid 1 and DD if= my drive “A” to B and C.
That won’t work. I assume you used default bootloader - grub2. You also need to copy bootloader itself which is installed in post-MBR gap. Please show exact command(s) you used to copy from A to B and C.
The problem is not using ext2 for boot it is that there seem to be an apparent problem with ext2 with this rather odd raid configuration. ie if it don’t work try another path./
Error occured while installing GRUB2
/usr/sbin/grub2-bios-setup: warning File system ‘ext2’ doesnt support embedding.
/usr/sbin/grub2-bios-setup: error: embedding is not possible, but this required for raid and LVM install
I just find this error extremely odd. since both raids are on ext4
It is impossible to install grub2 on Linux MD, that’s correct. You must install it in MBR of each drive. In 13.1 YaST has a bug that does not correctly detect this condition. Please try following: on installation summary screen click on Bootloader and select “Do not install bootloader”; save. Now again click on Bootloader and select GRUB2. Verify that screen now offers you installation in MBR and “Enable boot redundancy” is checked (please understand that all labels are approximate - I do not have these screens before me). What matters, it must notice that you have /boot as Linux MD and offer you to install grub2 on both disks.
I appreciate your help but it didnt work… , but you’ve atleast set me in a direction to get it fixed. Apparently its a known bug in Opensuse via this thread & this … I’ll just have to learn how to manually install grub to each drive or go back earlier verison of linux before the bug
Okay, I got the issue resolved. I’m primary posting for any user looking for answer in the future via search …
OpenSuse will not let install boot loaders on Multiple Disks during installation or afterwards with Yast. ONLY on the first disk. ( I’m assuming this used to an option back in previous versions of OpenSuse)
To boot from multiple disks you need install Grub2 on each individual disk example: sudo grub2-install /dev/sdb
Please note, its either a bug or works as intended that you cannot install grub2 on a partion. you’ll get a “cannot find a grub drive for check your device.map” error.
By installing grub2 on each individual disk the system will be able to boot independent of the first disk in case of drive failure
That’s wrong. openSUSE explicitly supports installation on RAID1 including automatic bootloader installation on both disks. It seems that it does not work in your configuration; it would be useful to open bug report so it could be investigated.
I tested your configuration (/boot on RAID1 and rest on RAID5) using Factory and indeed yast does not offer boot redundancy. Also in case when all partitions are RAID1 redundancy is not automatically activated (but at least offered).
