RAID install on pre-existing software RAID

Support
1

I can’t find Software RAID on the Wiki or in this forum, and not much on Manjaro Architect Installer ether.

I’m switching from openSUSE* and WinBlows’**’.

So, I already have a md127 “disk”. But the standard installer dose not seem to like playing with it, and I can find Software RAID in the man page for Architect Installer.

What I want to end up with is:
SDA (1)5Gb swap (2) 5.4Tb ext4 /home
SDB (1)32Mb Bios-Grub (2)512Mb fat32 /boot (3)28Gb RAID0 (this is 2x16Gb hardware RAID0)
SDC (1)28Gb RAID0
MD127 (1)57Gb /

…or take a Gb from each disk for a Software RAID0 swap.

'*'Ran openSUSE for two weeks, but the ONE game I play, KSP, would only get 1fps if I was lucky. After messing around with drivers and settings, I managed to break the KDE desktop. Now I’m trying something that I hope will play well [/joke] with NVIDIA.
'**'Yes I was on WinBlows for 25 years. But in my 35+ years of working on computers, I’ve also used BASIC, Linux, BSD (and MacOS), and a few Mainframes

2

Calamares doesn’t have support for raid afaik. Manjaro-architect has incomplete support, but you might have to remount your raid under /mnt before the installation phase.

3

Google says Calamares is the standard installer? Yeah, I sort of found that out. Six or seven tries failed.

Manjaro Architect Installer has RAID as step 4, but I can’t find any doc on the Wiki for software RAID

4

@Chrysostomus
Ummmm… There’s noting in /mnt on the Live USB. Or do I need to get into the USB and add to the /mnt there?

5

The mount dialog in manjaro-architect mounts the installation root to /mnt

6

The raid support was added by someone else. I don’t have the hardware to test it.

7

I made a successful installation in a virtualbox already. (just for fun)

  1. You have to prepare the software raid manually.
  2. Start in manjaro architect at the mount option.

the architect seems to be very intuitive. Myself i had no problems there. If you search for a step by step guide then no there is none for Raid, but it is very similar to any other setup. Just take care of the grub config of the boot partition.

here is more information about grub: GRUB - ArchWiki

8

have you checked with
mdadm ?

9

Ummmm… I’m lost. Do you mean
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E13203_01/tuxedo/tux71/html/rf57.htm
or is dmadm a person?

10

how to have mdadm ( Sof Raid by linux )
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/RAID

you can check with Xfce or gnome or KDE
that mdadm --scan will mounted opensuse raid ( not windows )

  1. create your soft raid ( that means / and /etc is created )
  2. see after for install
11

@ stephane

Ok, I’m still reading up on mdadm. But this is what I got so far:

[manjaro /]# mdadm --misc --zero-superblock /dev/md127
mdadm: Unrecognised md component device - /dev/md127
[manjaro /]# mdadm --misc --zero-superblock /dev/sdc
mdadm: Unrecognised md component device - /dev/sdc
[manjaro /]# mdadm --misc --zero-superblock /dev/sdc1
mdadm: Unrecognised md component device - /dev/sdc1
[manjaro /]# mdadm --misc --zero-superblock /dev/sdd
mdadm: Couldn't open /dev/sdd for write - not zeroing
[manjaro /]# mdadm --misc --zero-superblock /dev/sdd1
mdadm: Couldn't open /dev/sdd1 for write - not zeroing

When I use File Manager, md127 is in the /dev folder as a Block Device.
As you can see, I’m root, so I don’t think it’s a permission thing.
If I understand the Wiki, I need to get rid of the old RAID before making a new RAID… e.g. /dev/md127 should not be on my system.