Going from 8.10 to 9.10, also using raid5+lvm

[Th3Professor]

I'm running 8.10 right now. I have a RAID5 & LVM set-up also.

Would it be better to upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 and then from 9.04 to 9.10?

Or would it be better to just do a fresh install of 9.04?

What should be done to prepare the RAID5+LVM set-up for the change?

Thanks!

[Th3Professor]

The raid5+lvm part can be disregarded in here if preferred, I can ask about that in a separate subject elsewhere if nobody knows here.

The main question can just be:

Would it be better to upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 and then from 9.04 to 9.10; or would it be better to just do a fresh install of 9.04?


Thanks!

[Th3Professor]

The raid5+lvm part can be disregarded in here if preferred, I can ask about that in a separate subject elsewhere if nobody knows here.

The main question can just be:

Would it be better to upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 and then from 9.04 to 9.10; or would it be better to just do a fresh install of 9.04?


Thanks!

<bump>

[phillw]

Hi.

There are currently some 'issues' with 9.10 (Grub2) and RAID. There are several threads on the subject on this forum. I'd recommend reading them before you commit, if you require a RAID environment.

/edit - as you'd be leaping accross more than one version to land at 9.10 - IMHO - I'd go for a reinstall - That will give you Grub2 and ext4 'out of the box'

Regards,

Phill.

[Th3Professor]

I searched for tags w/ raid and 9.10 but found nothing. Have there been any recent discussions on raid issues w/ 9.10?

[Th3Professor]

I searched for tags w/ raid and 9.10 but found nothing. Have there been any recent discussions on raid issues w/ 9.10?
\bump/

[Th3Professor]

\bump/

bum p

[darkod]

I don't know about upgrade but if you decided to go for clean install of 9.10 and depending whether you use fakeraid (mobo onboard) or softraid, you might find something of interest here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=408461
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1338445

[Th3Professor]

I think it has been the better part of a year since I set up my raid5 and lvm.

I'm going to "think out loud" here, any ideas or input from anybody will be great.

I'm pretty sure I need to perform some steps to protect things before reinstalling the OS.

My current set-up... there are a few partitions I'm not using because I haven't set-up additional systems on them yet (other linux or unix systems).

Here's fdisk -l...

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00095d78

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 122 979933+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 * 123 24437 195310237+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 24438 26261 14651280 be Solaris boot
/dev/sda4 26262 60801 277442550 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 26262 28693 19535008+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 28694 57263 229488493+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 57264 57506 1951866 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8 57507 57749 1951866 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda9 57750 57992 1951866 bf Solaris
/dev/sda10 57993 60801 22563261 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000c177d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 60801 488384001 fd Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000caa62

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 60801 488384001 fd Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/sdd: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d3415

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 1 60801 488384001 fd Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/sdi: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe8900690

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdi1 1 121601 976760001 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
It looks like I might have my operating systems installed on a separate hard drive and my extra hard drives might be used only for storing files. I'm hoping that'll make a fresh install easier.

I believe I had intended on installing Gentoo and Solaris, I forget. Never got around to it. :(

I may go ahead and redo my partitions on what appears to be my "operating systems hard drive", I've got some wasted space on there. ...may still leave just 1 small spare partition for testing various *nix systems, no need for any more than that.

Here's a glance at mount...

/dev/sda5 on / type ext3
/dev/sda1 on /boot type ext3
/dev/sda6 on /studio/workspace type ext3
/dev/sda2 on /windows type fuseblk
/dev/mapper/vg0-vault on /studio/vault type xfs
/dev/mapper/vg0-zone on /zone type ext3
/dev/mapper/vg0-nomad on /nomad type ext3
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw)
/dev/sdi1 on /media/My Book type vfat
...and df -h...

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 19G 16G 2.2G 88% /
/dev/sda1 942M 72M 823M 9% /boot
/dev/sda6 216G 200G 4.9G 98% /studio/workspace
/dev/sda2 187G 107G 80G 58% /windows
/dev/mapper/vg0-vault
755G 247G 509G 33% /studio/vault
/dev/mapper/vg0-zone 87G 184M 83G 1% /zone
/dev/mapper/vg0-nomad
87G 342M 82G 1% /nomad
/dev/sdi1 932G 766G 167G 83% /media/My Book
I think the partitions are set up like this:
sda1 - boot
sda2 - windows
sda5 - the main OS (Ubuntu Studio)
sda6 - "workspace" is for editing files (music recordings)
sdb/sdc/sdd - raid and lvm combination set-up
"vault" - primary mass storage (raid/lvm)
"zone" - I'm not even using this. I wanted to put Solaris on it but didn't know if it's possible.
"nomad" - I'm also not using this. I wanted to put Gentoo (or any other *nix) on this but I didn't get a successful install.
sdi - external drive (irrelevant in this situation)

So, I'm thinking I don't have to worry about the windows partition, and that perhaps the boot partition will be automatically updated with a fresh Ubuntu install.

Before I install Ubuntu (Studio) 9.10 I'm going to move files over to the RAID/LVM disks.

After that, is there anything I need to do with the RAID and/or LVM on those 3 hard drives before I put a fresh install of Ubustu on the separate (non-raid/non-lvm) hard drive?

I can't remember if I used mdadm for the raid or if I'd have to "mdadm --stop" or any LVM -equivalent to "stop" prior to installing the new Ubuntu OS on the separate hard drive. Anybody know?

[gilson585]

If you need a more thorough set of instructions for fakeraid and 9.10 check out my post http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1360445

[Th3Professor]

Fake raid is something I may consider in the future but right now my raid+lvm hard drives are currently set up and storing data via soft raid. I'd like to be able to use raid with windows & linux but I only use windows for a couple rare applications (aka certain games). :) Anyway, thank you for that link! That'll come in handy in the future if I make a switch.

I had forgotten what I'm using, it turns out it's mdadm (along with lvm, I think lvm2).

mdadm --examine brings up some info...
raid5, 3 devices, state "clean", layout "left-symmetric", 128k chunk size.

Will I need to do anything with RAID and/or LVM prior to putting a fresh OS install on the computer?

The OS is on a hard drive separate from the raid/lvm set-up. Though, I still don't want to take any chances with not being able to access the raid/lvm hard drives after I get the new system installed. :-/

Are there any steps I need to take with lvm before and after a fresh OS install?

Likewise, are there any steps I need to take with raid (mdadm) before and after the fresh OS install?

[gilson585]

Quite the configuration you've got there. Also try and see if the livecd can pick the raid up automatically. I'm not that familiar with mdadm but will try and help. If you can get it to mount on the livecd correctly then you shall not have any issues. As far as my instructions go in that link, you only need them if you are booting off the raid array which you mention you are not. I don't believe you can do much damage in the livecd environment unless you accidentally erase the mbr by rebuilding the array but even that can be fixed w/o data loss. So try it out it might just go ahead and use dmraid instead of mdadm and detect it on its own. Note dmraid doesnt cooperate with fdisk so check disk structure with gparted. But as I said I have never used mdadm so read some of this and it also has some useful external links at the bottom good luck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mdadm

[Th3Professor]

no luck with the ubuntu 9.10 live cd... i burned a disc, loaded the system to test it out... and it does not recognize the raid/lvm set-up. it just sees a bunch of separate hard drives. :( i'm pretty bummed out about that right now. i was hoping i'd be able to go ahead and get a fresh 9.10 ubustu install going today/tonight but i have absolutely no idea what i need to do with either mdadm and/or lvm before the fresh OS install and after the fresh install. :(

[gilson585]

I'll look into it. I'm sure there is a way that you can get your current mdadm configuration and just implement it into the new install. If we can figure it out in the live environment I'd feel much safer giving you the go ahead with the install. I'll get back to you.

[Th3Professor]

I asked about the raid/lvm in the 'general' forum and someone replied with a helpful response, basically the following:

1. boot live cd
2. install mdadm & lvm (lvm2)
3. enter these commands:

sudo mdadm --assemble
sudo vgchange -a y...and a warning to back-up data, etc. - and I've copied important files over to a non-raid/lvm disk that is on a separate partition from the OS partition. (for now) for some reason every time i tried burning a data cd/dvd it screwed up :( and ruined a few very good quality dvds in the process. It burned the Ubuntu CD & Ubuntu Studio DVD fine. :confused:

Anyway, do you think those commands (the mdadm assemble and vgchange options) will do the trick? I noticed in the 'man' files that there are additional options including-


mdadm --assemble md-device options-and-component-devices...
vgchange --available [e|l] y (either "e" or "l" for "exclusive" or "local")

:confused:

...or maybe all I need to do once I install mdadm/lvm2 on the live boot is just:

sudo mdadm --assemble
sudo vgchange -a y:-/

[Th3Professor]

Should I save my old (current) fstab and mdadm.conf files and replace the new OS's version with the old ones after the new install? Or is that just a waste of effort?

(I'm guessing once I do the mdadm --assemble and vgchange -a y commands that it'll automatically adjust fstab and mdadm.conf.)

I wasn't sure where to get the "uuid" for the raid set-up, someone on another board mentioned "mdadm -E /dev/sdb1" (or sdc1, sdd1, etc.) to "examine" and that pulled it right up.

Does this look right:

$ sudo mdadm --assemble /dev/md0 --uuid=10056982:7e87ea13:b4ca6f73:30183c6d /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd
and still just a simple "-a y" (?) on the lvm:

$ sudo vgchange -a y

Does anyone know if entering the uuid in the mdadm --assemble command is really necessary?

On another note, I have an extra partition (for file storage) that is not part of the raid/lvm disks that initially showed up in an ubuntu live cd file browser but it disappeared when I clicked on it. In my current main install it shows as:
# /dev/sda6
/studio/workspace ext3

[Th3Professor]

Ubuntu Studio 9.10 installed fine, and even the raid/lvm set-up is working fine. :D I didn't even have to install mdadm/lvm2 or use any commands w/ the two applications.