Re: [cobalt-users] Is is possible to "mirror" RAQ2s?

["Robert G. Fisher" <rfisher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Aug 11, 2000 at 02:03:46AM -0400, Gerald Waugh wrote:
> I know this is a little off topic but I meant to say;
> How would one go about adding a second drive to a RaQ2/3 
> and RAID-1 software, to mirror the drives.
> Maybe Cobalt should offer a kit for RaQ3 to upgrade to RaQ4.

Well, first off there's the matter of actually adding another
drive.  On some RaQ2s you can get an external SCSI port to
connect other drives, this is the only way I know of to connect
additional drives to a RaQ of any sort since in my experience
there tends to only be one connector inside the box and even
if you used Y cables for power and a new drive cable, there's
the little problem that the small powersupply of a RaQ unit
won't power a second drive -- which leaves you with the external
drive.

As for the RAID levels, whether you want 0, 1, or 5 -- those are
kernel options, I'm running the OS 3.0 w/ the Upgrade 3.0 on 
one RaQ2 and the kernel upgrade to 2.0.34C52_SK includes the rd.o
module which is used for configuration of raid arrays...beyond
that, you would have to partition and format your external drive 
to have a partition matching the one you want to mirror, ie /home.

At this point you'd have to configure the array, see the RAID
howto for information on that...and reboot the system, hopefully
none of your changes have made the kernel unbootable for your
system because these kind of changes really go beyond the scope
of support and would most likely void your warranty.

You would then need to back up all the data from /home, use the 
raid-tools to create the array -- then restore the data from the
backup.

-- 
Robert G. Fisher		     NEOCOM Microspecialists Inc. 
System Administrator/Programmer      (540) 666-9533 x 116