Installing Debian onto a Software RAID

(and) Supporting a Promise Tx2000 IDE RAID Card

Kevin Griffin

[email protected]

Ian Clelland

[email protected]

Revision History
Revision .77	17 October 2003	Revised by: KG
minor changes
Revision .74	07 October 2003	Revised by: IC
minor changes
Revision .7	06 October 2003	Revised by: KG
initial revision

How to install Debian GNU/Linux onto a software RAID system, using a recently-made Promise IDE RAID controller. This particular case covers the scenario wherein:

You have a Promise IDE controller that sports a PDC20271 chip, and

You have two western digital hard drives (40 GB+).

This hardware is not supported by the current Debian bf2.4 installation disks (kernel version 2.4.18). Descriptions of proposed solutions.

Table of Contents

1. Background

2. Building Custom Installation Media

2.1. Motivation
2.2. Prepartion
2.3. Compiling the Kernel
2.4. Putting it together

3. Adding Software RAID support

3.1. Motivation
3.2. Prepartion
3.3. Putting it together

4. Sanity, or how to do this with a third drive.

4.1. Motivation
4.2. Preparation
4.3. Putting it together

5. Thanks goes out to...

1. Background

The mission was supposed to be simple: install Debian onto a pair of hard drives and a hardware RAID controller. It's easy to do, if the Promise controller has the PDC20270 chip on it. This one had a PDC20271 - which is not supported before kernel 2.4.19. So how do you get a customized 2.4.19 kernel into the installation floppies?