Bug#94200: should work on RAID partitions

[Dave Cinege]

Brian May wrote:

> I can't use grub on my system because it uses RAID. It can't
> load stage2, menu.lst or the Linux kernel from my RAID partitions.

Yes you can.
 
> I can't even hack Grub to use just one of my (hardcoded) RAID-1 mirrors,
> because the partition type is for RAID (0xFD) instead of ext2 (0x83).

The work around is to change the partition types back to 0x83, and 
spec 'md=' on your kernel arguments for all the RAID devices you want
turned on and kernel boot.

This is the mode of operation I must use as autodetect is unsafe when used
on a Storage Area Network with mutiple hosts. Example below.

In your case it should be ok to just do this for the boot partition
and leave the remaining set to autodetect.

> So a future version of grub which supports RAID can't rely on using the
> partition type to tell what the filesystem is.

I agree this should not be so tied so tightly to the type label, as it's
really quite arbitrary.


title           Linux 2.4.2-3  Debian 2.2 (root=/dev/sdb7)
kernel          (hd0,0)/2.4.2-3 root=/dev/sdb7 devfs=nomount raid=noautodetect\
md=10,/dev/sdh5,/dev/sdi5,/dev/sdj5 \
md=11,/dev/sdk5,/dev/sdl5,/dev/sdm5 \
md=12,/dev/md10,/dev/md11 \
md=9,/dev/sdh7,/dev/sdi7,/dev/sdj7,/dev/sdk7,/dev/sdl7,/dev/sdm7