[cobalt-users] [Qube 3] moving to RAID

[Frédéric Vecoven <frederic@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi.

I own a Qube 3 pro. When I got it, it had 2x 40GB drives, but I traded 
those
for 1x 120GB. I bought the Maxtor model with 8MB cache coming with a 3 
years
warranty... and 3 months later, it died :-(

So, after some playing with a Redhat linux CD, in rescue mode, I could 
restore
my boot partition on the new 120GB, and from there, restore everything 
from
tape (and from the dead hard drive, which was still working on some 
sectors).

So far, so good... but I don't want this to happen again, so I bought an
extra 120GB drive, same brand, and I am going to add RAID-1.

I am a Solaris guy, so please forgive my ignorance here with raidtools 
(otherwise,
I wouldn't be posting here :-)

I'd like to know the steps to mirror this disk, if possible WITHOUT 
reformatting
again and restoring. (Obviously, I will take another backup before 
trying the
procedure). In Solaris world, with Disksuite, I can even do that easily 
:

- create md devices, encapsulating the current partitions
- reboot from md devices
- add mirror and sync

Does this work with linux, and particulary the qube which has its 
special
way of booting ? [I know I'll have to change the boot device from the
serial console, since I had to change it when I put the 120GB drive]

Would this procedure work :

1) create /etc/raidtab properly, i.e. mirror 0 = hda, mirror 1 = hdc
   for each partition
2) run "mkraid"  (hoping this one will just copy mirror 0 onto mirror 
1, without
   deleting the data)
3) reboot
4) change boot device
5) boot from /dev/md1

This sounds simple, but I am not quite sure it will work.

If not, do you have a suggestion to create the boot partition mirrored ?
[to make this story even longer, I can't boot the qube from the network
because my 2 PC don't have a recognized network card... so when I need 
to
restore a boot partition, I need to put the hard drive in a PC, boot
from a linux cdrom, and use the net to restore from my tape (located on
an ultra2 running solaris)]

thanks for any input !

-Fred