Linux Mint on Software RAID5 (MDADM)

  1. Load Mint Live DVD
  2. Setup RAID5 Array. Use gparted (or any paritition tool) to make /boot and root (/) and swap partitions on each drive. Then use mdadm to make RAID1 /boot, RAID5 root (/) and format swap partitions. (I don’t recommending RAID’ing swap spaces, or don’t make swap partitions at all, use a file based swap once the system is running)
  3. Run Installer – Do advance partition layout. Map /boot, /, and swaps (if swap partitions were made). Set boot loader to RAID1′s MD (It always fails for me. But we’ll fix it later)
  4. When installer is done, don’t leave live session. Open terminal. run the following
    • mount /dev/md1 /mnt (md1 is my root mdadm array)
    • mount /dev/md0 /mnt/boot (md0 is my raid1 boot mdadm array)
    • for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys /run; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done (Mount all special folders so we can run commands in a chroot environment. Taken from here)
    • chroot /mnt
    • apt-get install mdadm
    • grub-install /dev/sda;grub-install /dev/sdb;grub-install /dev/sdc (This is installing grub on each drive, so if drive fails we can boot off another. do this for all drvies)
    • update-grub
    • exit
  5. reboot into os

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