Software RAID setup at install...

[Martin Stone]

Mike Cisar wrote:
> Have just attempted to do a clean install of FC1 and set up software RAID 1
> during the install process.  I have 2x 120Gig IDE drives which I want to
> RAID1 and then split into 3 partitions (/, /boot and swap).  I want /boot to
> be the first partition (if it's not the first partition it ends up getting
> the error "system may not be bootable, blah, blah").  In a non-raid
> configuration this is not a problem, if I flat as EXT3 it seems to recognize
> that /boot should be "first" and always shuffles it to the first partition
> (if I don't specify the partition as /boot it still seems to shuffle it off
> sometimes to a higher partition, though not always).  However, if I go and
> try to select SOFTWARE RAID as the partition type, the small partition which
> would be boot once I set up the raid ends up getting pushed up to the 2nd or
> 3rd partition which then spits up the error message again.  
> 
> So far the only solution I've found is to run the installer, partition the
> 1st drive, cancel the install once partition table has been written, start
> the install again, partition the 2nd drive, cancel again and then start the
> install a 3rd time at which point I can change the existing partition types
> to Software RAID, raid the drives and complete the install.
> 
> There must be an easier way, help :-)

I'm in the same boat.  I may be alone in this, but I absolutely *hate* all these 
new-fangled partition twiddlers a la "Disk Druid".  What I do is boot from CD 
the first time with "linux rescue", partition using fdisk, and reboot - it's 
faster and less annoying.  You should be able to do something similar, except 
that you will have to fdisk twice, with a "raidstart" in between...

I sure wish we could get at fdisk from the installer, though.