Here i go again, Linux what flavour?

[LeperousDust]

I won't be backing up the 1.2 TB drive, it will be mainly meadia i can get again if worst comes to worst, the redundancy will do me fine for that, but i will want to backup the OS just for ease of restore if the OS drive gets fubared on me. I'll look into incremental backups with acronis, seems good. Or as mark says if you can make a copy of the OS onto a USB drive i could set that up to copy it to the other internal drive and set it as a scheduled tast maybe?

[Dr. Z]

Originally Posted by LeperousDust

I won't be backing up the 1.2 TB drive, it will be mainly meadia i can get again if worst comes to worst, the redundancy will do me fine for that, but i will want to backup the OS just for ease of restore if the OS drive gets fubared on me. I'll look into incremental backups with acronis, seems good. Or as mark says if you can make a copy of the OS onto a USB drive i could set that up to copy it to the other internal drive and set it as a scheduled tast maybe?

The way mark suggests involves going singleuser, which means you lose your server for a little bit while you do the copy. Not hard to make a tarball of it all, but I would suggest that you would need to know a touch more about Linux and how it works at a deeper level before you took that approach

It seems to me that a one-button recovery solution would be better for you (as in, something most likely to get you back online ASAP), certainly for the time being. I have just had to restore a system from a tarball and it was a pretty steep learning curve to get that back working as it should (probably slightly more complicated than anything you will encounter, but a complete new system wouldn't put you far wide of the mark!).

[Chuckles]

Why do want a software RAID rather than a hardware one?

To be honest, unless you are worried about the licensing, you would be best sticking on 2000 server IMO.

[LeperousDust]

Hmmmm, right forget even planning ahead here, i have no clue whats going on but something is wrong. I boot from the Live CD install point it the the samsung drive no errors no nothing, everything seems fine. When i restart and take the CD out as the computer tries to boot all i get instead of grub is a blank screen with a blinking cursor, a bit of HDD activity but thats it, left it for a few minutes and nothing happens that i can see at all. Sooooo what do i do from here?

[Dr. Z]

Originally Posted by starscream

Why do want a software RAID rather than a hardware one?

To be honest, unless you are worried about the licensing, you would be best sticking on 2000 server IMO.

Because its quite likely he cant afford a hardware raid card? Certainly not one with enough connectors for all his drives

EDIT:

Actually just to expand on that, its my opinion (and I am going to stick to it) that a linux-based software raid solution is FAR better than a windows-based "pseudo-hardware" fakeraid solution. Two reasons:

1. Setting it all up, you know EXACTLY what is going on rather than a mishmash of imitation RAID cards and trick drivers and when your system throws a drive, you know exactly where you stand regarding recovery (ie, not trusting it to a vague pseudoraid bios or horrendously cheapo Windows software)

2. If something goes wrong with your IDE/SATA controller, you are not COMPLETELY buggered.

[Dr. Z]

Originally Posted by LeperousDust

Hmmmm, right forget even planning ahead here, i have no clue whats going on but something is wrong. I boot from the Live CD install point it the the samsung drive no errors no nothing, everything seems fine. When i restart and take the CD out as the computer tries to boot all i get instead of grub is a blank screen with a blinking cursor, a bit of HDD activity but thats it, left it for a few minutes and nothing happens that i can see at all. Sooooo what do i do from here?

Is the Samsung HDD plugged into the mobo, and if it is, is the onboard raid silliness disabled?

[LeperousDust]

Originally Posted by starscream

Why do want a software RAID rather than a hardware one?

To be honest, unless you are worried about the licensing, you would be best sticking on 2000 server IMO.

Your probably right i suppose i'm not worried but i thought i may be able to get pretty nice looking NAS setup along the linux route.

Originally Posted by DRZ

The way mark suggests involves going singleuser, which means you lose your server for a little bit while you do the copy. Not hard to make a tarball of it all, but I would suggest that you would need to know a touch more about Linux and how it works at a deeper level before you took that approach

It seems to me that a one-button recovery solution would be better for you (as in, something most likely to get you back online ASAP), certainly for the time being. I have just had to restore a system from a tarball and it was a pretty steep learning curve to get that back working as it should (probably slightly more complicated than anything you will encounter, but a complete new system wouldn't put you far wide of the mark!).

I see i see, yeah one touch backup will do me, i'll leave the tarball parp for now, i've got no idea what-so-ever.

[LeperousDust]

Originally Posted by DRZ

Because its quite likely he cant afford a hardware raid card? Certainly not one with enough connectors for all his drives

Well all four fit on the rocketraid card so i suppose i could get away with it, but if the card died it would be pointless me having the raid5 in the first place...

Originally Posted by DRZ

Is the Samsung HDD plugged into the mobo, and if it is, is the onboard raid silliness disabled?

Yes its plugged into the mobo, the mobo can see it as normal, the liveCD could see it as normal, and no RAID enabled AT ALL. It's plugged into the normal controller on the motherboard provided by whoever not even the tacked on south bridge promise fast track with just IDE enabled.

Thing is when i try to reinstall from the Live CD it mounts the samm drive and the drive is populated with boot and root folders etc... like its all good to go, just seems a grub problem?

//Edit: DRZ i forgot to add, thanks for all the help so far here, as you can tell i seriously need it. It's hard not to just load windows back up again In fact if Windows Home Server could actually use RAID rather than its strange version this thread wouldn't even be here...!

[Dr. Z]

Did you manually partition the drive or did you let the Ubuntu magical mystery partitioner do it all for you? Just wondering if the MBR made it to the drive or not...

If you select "boot from primary hard drive" in the Ubuntu LiveCD initial screen menu, does it boot or does it sit there pondering?

[LeperousDust]

I let ubuntu work its magic since theres nothing i want on the drive at all.

Didn't think of trying the disc will do so now.

//Edit: Now what i get is:
Booting from hard disk...
a blank screen and the blinking cursor...

I can still reset with Ctrl atl delete if that counts for anything? (Both ways)