Setting up and installing Solus on RAID?

I thought if you setup hardware RAID that your PC should show it as one device, not two, so I think there may be an issue with the array.

bndoug66 Sorry I've never really done hardware RAID on desktops so I can't say on that front. I'm not really sure on the benefits of RAID in the days of SSDs but each to their own.

I am old school and I worked in a place with 4 RAIDS. Great storage, large sarcophagus's in the industrial sense. I always thought of them as external drives. I just looked it up and a lot of google agrees with my conceptualization, which shocked me, actually. We mounted them, but never really ran anything off them but optimization stuff.
For what that's worth...
Anyway. Approach as if external?
I ran Solus off an external Lacie Porsche HDD for a long time---it was just a matter of boot order.
And let the .iso take control of the whole external (raid) drive for install.
I don't have any answer but I think it's do-able and I hope it's food for thought. Good luck.

A couple ways you could see it to be sure. If your raid is a physical HDD it's hardware. And you can mount it? How do you make it software? You mean format it? Do it --sounds like you have raid to spare and it's not like it can't be undone. I think running solus off a raid is pretty bitchin (if it can be done.) Do it! This forum needs its tutorials.

Coming in a little late for this one. We don't officially support Software RAID, though that would be my personal preference. Hardware RAID can be a pain when a controller dies. If you have hardware RAID setup, it should just show up as a single device (i.e. /dev/sda) and let you install to it. I've never actually tried to do a MD Raid on Solus, but I can say for sure the installer will require you to use the manual partitioning method.

DataDrake Isn't it tied to /dev/sd, /dev/mmcb /dev/nvme (or whatever) drive types?

I know I have seen people install Solus temporarily on a single drive and then hack it onto a RAID.

Justin They explicitly called out SCSI devices in the original post.

DataDrake Justin
fascinated observer on this thread. Not pretty or modern way of doing things but it's practical if the HW is sound. Lack of official support is the sobering note, however lofty the idea. But I'm not sure what that means exactly.

brent If we had official support for Software RAID, the installer would be able to set up an MD RAID set and install on top of it. Nothing special is required for Hardware RAID support, it's just a nightmare when you use a RAID controller that isn't standardized. RAID 6 is especially known for this. You absolutely much replace a failed RAID 6 controller with an identical or compatible one from the same vendor or you will never recover your data. Occasionally the same is true of the more common RAID0 or RAID1 formats because of how the controller labels the disks themselves. Some hardware RAID controllers also require the disks to remain in the same order on the bus for the array to be read. In comparison, MD Software RAID requires no special hardware and allows you to place the same drives into a completely different machine, in no particular order on the bus, and still be able to access the entire array.

I installed Solus on software raid with mdadm. Mdadm wasn't included in the default install so I needed to take a few steps. From memory, they were:
1) Install mdadm in the live environment
2) Set up the disks manually
3) Run the installer
4) Mount the raid and set up bind mounts for /sys, /proc, and /dev
5) Chroot into the newly installed system and install mdadm
6) Double check the fstab and update clr-boot-manager
7) Exit chroot, remove bind mounts, reset.

Nic Yeah that's about what I expected. Though long-term we'll probably want mdadm in the initrd as well.

DataDrake Thanks for the great information here. I just love the idea of the OP and if I had a RAID I'd definitely try it. Elsewhere you said you were working on your second phd. I never wanted to do that meat-grinder the first-time. Kudos.