RAID Setup

These instructions only apply if the MultiDevice ISO installation media was used. If the two drives are not the exact same size, then the smaller drive must be the drive selected during installation. There is no way to add a second drive to a RAID array if it’s not at least the same size or bigger than the first drive.

Warning

MD RAID setup can be temperamental. If there are any problems during the installation it’s recommended to wipe all drives and start over. That can be done with wipefs, I.E. wipefs -fa /dev/sda or wipefs -fa /dev/nvme0, prior to installing.

Setup Instructions

  1. If not already, login as the root user to get to the # command prompt.

  2. Type vicibox-mdraid1 and press ENTER to start the setup process.

  3. If there are any orphaned RAID arrays, they will be shown. To remove them press Y and then ENTER. This will destroy the data on these drives.

  4. If this is not the first time running the script, a summary of the current RAID arrays will be shown.

  5. If there are any suitable target drives in the system, they will be shown. Select the appropriate drive number from the list and press ENTER.

  6. A confirmation prompt will be shown to confirm the destruction of the target drive. Press ENTER to confirm the target drive.

  7. The drive will be partitioned and added to the RAID arrays. A summary of the arrays will be shown when complete.

  8. To check the status of the MD RAID arrays, type cat /proc/mdstat and press ENTER. md1 is the swap array and md2 is the root array.

  9. While not strictly necessary, it’s advised to reboot the server at this time. Type reboot and press ENTER to reboot the server.

For more screenshots of these steps, see RAID Specific.

Filesystem Layout

System Mounts

Mount

MD Array

/ (root)

/dev/md2

swap

/dev/md1
Drive Layout

MD Array

Partition

/dev/md2

/dev/sda4 or /dev/nvme0n1p4

/dev/md1

/dev/sda3 or /dev/nvme0n1p3

Note

When initially installed, the swap MD array is not setup. The drive layout shows only a single drive, but you can replace sda with sdb or nvme0 with nvme1 for the second drive that gets added to the array. /dev/md0 is not used by ViciBox and available for end users to use as they see fit.

Screenshots

Use wipefs to clear target drives
wipefs to clean drives