So my new 10,000 rpm raptor drives came in today, and I’ve had a sabrent hardware 4 port sata raid controller sitting around for a while, and decided to put them to work in a desktop server I plan on migrating the site’s I host (including this one) over to during the next few weeks.

One of the main reasons for the move is I this new raid1 setup will help ensure that me and my clients data will remain safe, in the case of a hardware failure. While I do currently backup with mysqldump and some rsync magic, restoration is alot easier using raid, then moving and re-installing everything from backups, not to mention just add’s to the geek cred :)

However I ran into a problem installing grub the error stated:

Unable to install GRUB in /dev/mapper

Executing ‘grub-install ‘/dev/mapper’ failed.

This is a fatal error

and because I haven’t had a lot of experience with either raid configurations or ever having installed linux to a machine with such a configuration I needed to do some research.

I found a few good posts, but most of them recommended creating another partition just for grub, and then using the raid drives for the rest of the install.

To me that sounded like a poor workaround, I want the data to be mirrored on both drives, equally, grub and all.

That led me to try a few other avenues to figure out the correct and easy way to get through the install.

Long story short, here’s a breakdown of how to get it setup and working, the easy way. In this breakdown I’ll assume you can follow the easy installer prompts for Ubuntu, have “activated the serial ata raid devices”, have taken note of the array’s name (you can take note of it on the “[!!]  Partition disks” screen that looks like the purple box on the left. (sorry not a vm so I had to take a picture of the screen…) in my case the name of the array is “sil_biegdfaaeabh”, and have continued onto the part of the install where it asks where to install grub.

  • First let’s find the name of the raid array, in case you forgot to take note of the name as mentioned in the previous paragraph (as I’ve done a few times when just mindlessly pressing next in the wee hours of the morning..) press Ctrl +alt+F2 to drop into a busybox terminal session. Press enter when prompted to start the terminal.
  • Type in the command [codesyntax lang="bash" lines="no" title="command"]

    [/codesyntax] and find that funny-named array after the entry named controller and then head back to your install terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1.
  • enter that name after the /dev/mapper that is populated by default. In my case:
    [codesyntax lang="bash" lines="no" title="install grub to:"]

    [/codesyntax]Of course CHANGE THE NAME and substitute your OWN in the example above!
  •  Continue setting up Ubuntu as you see fit, as the rest should complete without any further hassle!
In my case, I think after an update&&upgrade and mabye
[codesyntax lang="bash" title="command"]
[/codesyntax] IF you feel like having a desktop to work with, of course. I’m starting to like XFCE a lot more these days, and the Midori browser is coming along nicely, so also give that a consideration. Some tasks I just find easier with a mouse and desktop, notice I didn’t say faster, but this post is all about easy!
Then it’s on to something like ISPConfig3, I’m still loving the ease of administration of my web hosting and haven’t seen anything else close to as feature packed!
As for the actual migration, I’ll probably be too busy with it to document it fully, but I might write-up some helpful reminders for you and I if I find the time.