There are a countless number of dmraid tutorials on the internet that are over complicated and that do not apply to Linux Mint 6 (Felicia). Here I will show you in a few easy steps how to set-up dmraid using the Linux Mint 6 Live CD without any unnessessary frustration. The basis of my tutorial is the Ubuntu dmraid documentation and assumes that you are setting up RAID 0 or 1.
1. Go into your motherboard’s BIOS and turn on the RAID support
2. Go into your RAID’s BIOS and set-up your RAID partition
3. Boot the Live CD
4. Open Terminal and type the following:
sudo apt-get install dmraid
5. Once completed the above installation, type the following:
sudo modprobe dm-raid4-5
6. Now it’s time to install Linux Mint
7. Upon reaching the partition menu, select your RAID partition
8. Upon reaching the install confirmation menu (step 7 of 7), click on the Advanced button and uncheck install boot loader
9. Once the installation is completed, check your partitions by typing the following in Terminal:
cd /dev/mapper
and then:
dir
10. Copy the partition without a number; I will use dabdgddgLinuxFTW as an example
11. Now we have to see how the partitions are set-up, so type the following in Terminal:
sudo fdisk dabdgddgLinuxFTW
12. Type p in Terminal to see the actual partitions:
13. Note and copy which partition is the Linux partition (the other ones you will see is extended and swap); I will usedabdgddgLinuxFTW1 as an example
14. Type q in Terminal to exit fdisk
15. Now we have to mount the RAID partition in order to set-up grub by typing the following in Terminal:
sudo mount dabdgddgLinuxFTW1 /target
and
sudo mount –bind /dev /target/dev
(there should be two dashes before bind)
and
sudo mount -t proc proc /target/proc
and
sudo mount -t sysfs sys /target/sys
16. Now we have to set-up grub by typing the following in Terminal:
sudo chroot /target
and
apt-get install dmraid
and
apt-get install grub
and
mkdir /boot/grub
and
cp /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/* /boot/grub
or
cp /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-pc/* /boot/grub
and
grub –no-curses
and
device (hd0) /dev/mapper/dabdgddgLinuxFTW
and
root (hd0,0)
and
setup (hd0)
and
quit
and
update-grub
(press y when asked to confirm)
17. Finally reboot.
You should now have your boot times and load times halved. Hopefully in Ubuntu 9.04 and Linux Mint 7 full RAID support will be integrated with the Live CD.
Hi, thanks for the guide. I have a problem, after inserting the command: ” grub –no-curses” I get this error:
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Unknown partition table signature
[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For
the first word, TAB lists possible command
completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename. ]
grub> device (hd0) /dev/mapper/isw_bbhgichgbb_Stripe
device (hd0) /dev/mapper/isw_bbhgichgbb_Stripe
grub> root (hd0,0)
root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
setup (hd0)
Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition
Is your RAID partition totally dedicated and clean? If not try to delete and create your RAID partition in your RAID’s BIOS. And can you please post the output from this:
find /boot/grub/stage1
Sorry but I think you left out a couple of steps
I followed these instructions twice and they worked each time. What problems did you encounter.
I have the same problem
Unknown partition table signature…
and article should read Grub –no-curses (for Ubuntu 8.10)
This worked great! Just remember to put two dashes before no-curses as well.
I did enter two dashes. A WordPress bug converts two dashes into one dash.
Thnak you! Thank you i tried but it something bug in live Mint-Linux 7.0, that apt command doesnt get corerct attribut . Lolmao
Hello i am experiencing problems when I enter the command “sudo mount nvidia_aefedddh1 /target” it gives me the message “mount: mount point /target does not exist”
Hey, so I’m new to linux and have an extra machine lying around that I ran windows on. It kept crashing and having networking problems with my other windows box so now I would like to try linux. Mint seemed like a good choice so I saw your tutorial and gave it a shot. My machine I’m attempting to install linux on uses BIOS raid, or as it seems to be called in the linux world, Fake Raid. I completely reformatted both HDs and re created a raid array in the bios. Everything in your tutorial went great until around step 10. I coppied the /dev/mapper/control file using “sudo cp -R control ” and it coppied over fine. I then tried “sudo fdisk ” and get the following error:
last_lba(): I don’t know how to handle files with mode 20640
Unable to read
I have looked around online but can not find any real answers as to how to fix this, or as to even why this is really happening. I guess this all stems from my lack of understanding of what is really being done in these guide steps. I hope someone can help me out…
Thanks
Any help setting up the above on linux mint Helena 8 would be nice
This might help you:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=20170&start=15#p178926
hmm…. I think I actually got RAID0 running on linix mint 8.
I’ll try to retrace my steps and if I can confirm this I’ll post it.