Loading ...Today I received the parts which in total should be able to make up an entire computer - and it did. Or hopefully 
. No problems during assembling occurred, but the installation of Ubuntu made some trouble. The trouble was connected to the fact, that I bought two disk so that I could make RAID-1. It was quite tricky to get working (the right SATA-channel, Ubuntu installer-version etc.), but it seems that it's finally working. Before explaining more I probably have to list the specs:
- Intel Q6600
- Gigabyte GA-G33-DS3R
- 2 GB RAM
- 500 W PSU
- 2 x WD 320 GB disk
- Misc. parts
I'm not that interested in hardware, only the things it can do for me . The mainboard provides some sort of SATA RAID aka. FakeRAID, which I read was (roughly speaking) a driver to Windows making the software RAID appear as hardware RAID (or something like that). Nevertheless, I decided to just forget that whicky feature and
just go for the "native" software RAID support in Linux (provided by mdadm - it oddly looks like "madam"!).
In the ordinary Ubuntu-installer (ubuntu-7.10-desktop-amd64.iso) mdadm is not enclosed, but it is in the alternate installer (ubuntu-7.10-alternate-amd64.iso) which furthermore guides you thruogh the configuration. So I'll recommend using the text-based alternate installer.
Before that worked, I had to connect the disks to the ordinary SATA-ports and not the fancy GSATA ports. I don't know why, but as earlier mentioned, I actually don't care if it just works the other way.
I actually made me partitioning a bit different that one would normally do. At servers RAID-1 is also able to avoid some system crashes because everything (i.e. also including system files) is mirrored. I only need to get my data mirrored. If a disk crashes I don't mind whether the system does, too, as long as I have my data. Besides that, GRUB is not working with mdX-devices, creating a need for a separate boot-partitioning. Well, a lot of arguments back and forth I came up with this partitioning:
- /dev/sda
- /boot, 1 GB
- swap, 4 GB
- /, 40 GB
- 275,1 GB for RAID
- /dev/sdb
- /xenimages, 41 GB
- swap, 4 GB
- 275,1GB for RAID
- /dev/md0
- assembled by the two 275,1 GB sdax- and sdby-partitions making a /home
This configuration mirrors my home directory, but doesn't protect my system files - it's no problem in my case, I'll just remount /xenimages to a bootable / and/or make a fresh install when receiving a new disk. This set-up further more provides two different swap-partitions. Well, it was the best solution I could come up with.
So in a few seconds I'm ready to use my new computer properly. Guess whether I'm going to compile OpenMoko or install Xen as the first thing - I actually don't know it yet! It's certainly a shame that humans aren't able to natively multi-task yet. Maybe it'll come in the next firmware upgrade.