Installing with raid and uefi

[slackcub]

I am going to be installing kubuntu very soon on a new machine that I built, and was hoping to get a little advice before I completely screw everything up.

1) There are 3 500GB drives in this system. I am going to be creating a RAID 5 setup using a controller on my motherboard, but I just wanted to know if there's anything I need to be aware of or kernel options I need to pass on boot in order to make this array available to use as an installation/boot device for Kubuntu.

2) I have done some research into using UEFI and I have seen some folks have had issues with using UEFI and Grub. I figured I would still give it a shot. Anything I need to watch out for?

Thanks for any advice!

David

[SteveRiley]

I don't use RAID, so I can't offer advice here. Other folks on our forum might chime in.

For UEFI, if you aren't hassling with dual-boot, then the installation is straightforward. The installer can create the proper partition table and the EFI system partition. Note that some kernels have trouble writing to NVRAM variables because they're too aggressive about not borking bad Samsung UEFIs. This has been properly fixed in 3.10 and will likely be backported. I don't think such backport has happened yet, however. If you find that the installation finishes without incident yet your computer refuses to boot anything, let us know and I can walk you through a one-time workaround.

[oshunluvr]

Raid advice? Don't use your motherboard RAID. There's no advantage to using on-board based RAID over linux software RAID except and unless you are also using Windows on the same RAID devices. If your motherboard RAID is advanced enough to allow partial drive use - then create a separate device for Windows and let linux do it's own RAID.

Why not use native RAID?
1. If your motherboard dies and your RAID device is native (BIOS based, aka on-board) - the RAID dies with it. If you are able to get a replacement motherboard with the exact chipset, you'll usually be OK. But what if 3 or 4 years down the road your motherboard dies and the older units aren't available? It's possible newer unit will work, but maybe not and no guarantee.

2. Repair and recovery and tuning. Using on-board RAID limits your recovery and tuning to the tools available in your BIOS (virtually none) or to a or recovery disk. Not a very easy task.


With linux RAID:
1. Setup takes less than a minute and RAID devices can be created, started, stopped, removed without rebooting (except if you're installed to it of course).

2. If your computer dies, you can install your hard drives into any computer running linux and access your data immediately.

3. If you need to do recovery and/or fine tuning, the tools are available from your install or from a live bootable environment.



Final note: You might consider btrfs instead of RAID. Easier to manage and way more options, functions, and data safety than plain RAID with only a small decrease in performance.