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.
Manuel
January 5, 2009 at 12:48 am
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
Paul Weiss
January 5, 2009 at 1:22 am
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
Jim
February 16, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Sorry but I think you left out a couple of steps
Paul Weiss
February 17, 2009 at 9:51 pm
I followed these instructions twice and they worked each time. What problems did you encounter.
michaelL
March 7, 2009 at 2:18 am
I have the same problem
Unknown partition table signature…
and article should read Grub –no-curses (for Ubuntu 8.10)
Steve
April 9, 2009 at 2:32 pm
This worked great! Just remember to put two dashes before no-curses as well.
Paul Weiss
April 20, 2009 at 11:09 pm
I did enter two dashes. A WordPress bug converts two dashes into one dash.
in4man
June 25, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Thnak you! Thank you i tried but it something bug in live Mint-Linux 7.0, that apt command doesnt get corerct attribut . Lolmao
MaxBlade
June 27, 2009 at 5:10 pm
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”
LinuxGreenhorn
October 20, 2009 at 9:02 pm
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
online
February 7, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Any help setting up the above on linux mint Helena 8 would be nice
Paul Weiss
February 12, 2010 at 3:12 am
This might help you:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=20170&start=15#p178926
online
February 9, 2010 at 12:12 am
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.