Setting up and installing Solus on RAID?

bndoug66

Hello everyone,
I am completely new to Linux let alone Solus. I have hardware RAID on my MB and set it up in BIOS.
Now I am trying to figure out how to get Solus to recognize the RAID and install.

I am trying to install on RAID 1. I have formatted both partitions dev/sde/ and dev/sdf.
My question is, how do I get Solus to see both partitions as one?

Thank you for your help.
Doug

P.S. To the Solus Team, Great Work and Thank you!

Justin

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

Justin
Hi Justin,
Thank you for your assistance. I looked into the Disks "window" and it has all of my disks listed individually.
I'm not sure if Linux works like Windows in that you setup the hardware RAID, install the OS, and then format the Volume.

Justin

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.

bndoug66

I'm still old school (lol), using HDD's. I just had a thought (scary stuff there!). Probably redundant and probably wrong.
I was wondering if I need to setup software RAID using something like, mdadm? If so, I wonder if I leave the hardware or do I undo it? So many things to learn.

brent

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.

bndoug66

Thank you Brent, I really appreciate it. I'm beginning to think that I might have to undo the hardware RAID and just set up a software RAID. I prefer hardware RAID's though, Windows thing I guess.

brent

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.

DataDrake

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.

Justin

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.

DataDrake

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

brent

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.

DataDrake

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.

brent

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.

Nic

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.

DataDrake

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

bndoug66

Hello everyone,
First off I want to say a BIG Thank You, to Justin, Brent, DataDrake, and Nic for posting on my thread and giving me some ideas and really good info. So, thank you all! I'm thinking (again scary thought!) that I probably should give some more detail about my set up, it might help a little?

So, my MB is a Gigabyte GA-790X-UD4P and it has 8 SATA connectors.
2 of them can be set up as RAID 0, 1, or JBOD.
The other 6 SATA ports can do RAID 0, 1, 5. or 10.
I also have a HighPoint Rocket RAID PCIe card installed.
The MB supports booting from the Rocket RAID card.
I am trying to install Solus on the 2 RAID 1 drives. Again this is a hardware RAID set up in BIOS.

From reading all of the really great posts so far, I have concluded that I can try and perhaps install the
Gigabyte MB RAID drivers in the initial "live" Solus environment and then try installing onto the RAID.
I figure the worst that can happen is smoking HDD's, LOL. Seriously, I am going to try it, kinda think
it may not work, but you never know until you try.

Either way I will post my success (or failure) after I give it a go.

bndoug66

OK, so after a loooooong night I have concluded the following:

Solus does not like hardware RAID.
Apparently, Linux in general (not in all cases) prefers software RAID.
I guess I'm using software RAID, lol

This really is not a problem and as I said, I am new to Linux and have a lot to learn. So,
being eager to learn, I'm going to try out software RAID.
On a side note: I did try to install Linux Mint, that did recognize my RAID no problem.
I just could not get Mint installed (that's a whole nother story).

Thanks again to everyone for their comments and suggestions.