Unfortunately, the above didn't work for us. I tried installing on a small spare WD hard drive, but the system was still not bootable.
However, the hardware gods are merciful. I found a Maxtor 20GB hard drive that I could use to install the system. From there, I was able to recompile a kernel that supported the PDC20271, initialize a software RAID, and move most of the filesystem onto said RAID.
Stuff you'll need: A spare hard drive. A Debian bf2.4 installtion CD-ROM. A CD-ROM drive, and a BIOS that will let you boot from there.
Installation was pretty typical, because the WD and the ide-raid conttroller weren't even noticed. Nothing to report there.
Rebuilt the kernel, with 2.4.22 and necesssary options built in. (software raid, no ide-raid, etc.)
At this point I should refer you to the Software Raid Howto: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html
I used the mdadm command specified there to create a series of RAID partitions that would be useful in this installation:
This information is exported from a gnumeric spreadsheet.
| mount point | RAID level | Size (in MB) | Physical Size | Disk(s) | device, primary | device, secondary | raid device name | chunk size in kib (kibibytes) | filesystem |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| /home | RAID 1 | 30720 | 61440 | WD 1,2 | hde5 | hdg5 | /dev/md0 | 32 | ext3 |
| /export | RAID 1 | 5120 | 10240 | WD 1,2 | hde6 | hdg6 | /dev/md1 | 32 | ext3 |
| /var | RAID 1 | 40960 | 81920 | WD 1,2 | hde7 | hdg7 | /dev/md2 | 32 | ext3 |
| /opt | RAID 1 | 1024 | 2048 | WD 1,2 | hde8 | hdg8 | /dev/md3 | 32 | ext3 |
| /tmp | RAID 0 | 1024 | 1024 | WD 1,2 | hde9 | hdg9 | /dev/md4 | 32 | ext2 |
| /var/local/ amanda | RAID 0 | 2048 | 2048 | WD 1,2 | hde10 | hdg10 | /dev/md5 | 32 | ext2 |
| swap | N/A | 1024 | 1024 | WD 1,2 | hde11 | hdg11 | N/A | 32 | swap |
Special Notes:
If you create and use a /tmp like this, you will need to run chmod +1777 on it so that the sticky bit is set, and you'll be able to generate man pages.
Swap needs no RAID (not even RAID0). Disk striping for swap partitions is supported natively by the kernel.
/tmp is assumed to be, well, temporary, and is not mirrored. As well this partition was given an ext2 filesystem to save space. The AMANDA holding disk is also not mirrored, in the interests of space.
After initializing and formatting the various RAID partitions, I began mounting them onto the existing filesystem in temporary locations and then copying , for example, cp -aR /var /mnt/var. After a successful copy, it remains only to umount the raid from the temporary location and remount it in the permanent one. Edit your /etc/fstab appropriately.