Is Mageia for Me? Complex Install.

[fizzeruk]

Hi,

New here, just found this OS a reccomended to watch.
Played with Ubuntu, Gentoo and CentOS but looking for something fresh.

I have a few specific questions that I have not found definate answers to, my requiermenst are very specific so hopefully some of you peeps can say Yay or Nay!

Install will be on this... and need access to... along with....

/ on Intel IMSM Raid 0 partition (Fake raid and latest MDADM handles these).

NTFS Raid 10 Data partition on Intel IMSM partition need RW access (I know the risks).
(Always had issues getting this shutdown without it being marked as 'Dirty' / RO).

EXT4 Raid 50 using MDADM (not DMRaid). It is 2 x Raid 5 on Raid 0 (using 0.9 metadata / superblock)

Boot will be through rEFInd on the and EFI system partition (W7/10 also, have EFI BIOS takes a bit of fiddling but rEFInd works for me).

Will be running a Desktop and a KVM lab with VT-d/IOMMU passthorough.

The only OS I have had luck with is Ubuntu, but still could not get the DATA IMSM partition in a write state on Boot and the RAID 50 would randomly not start, all needing manual intervention.
Mint just won't install on an EFI Raid 0
Gentoo did, but as you know it is quite a steep learning curve, as I want to use this system as an academic learning tool I would lean toward a Fedora based system.

Will have time to try an install at the weekend, just wondering about any potential pitfalls with Mageia and the aboe configuration.
Particularly the first hurdle of EFI boot install on Intel RAID 0.....

Cheers....

/Virtual Beers purchased.



Just wondering..

ANY input / pointers would be GREATLY!! Appreciated.

[ChuangTzu]

Fizz,

Should be fine. I do not recommend Fedora for "educational" purposes. Mageia, Slackware, CentOS or Debian would be great for that.

[xboxboy]

Mageia 5 has 'repaired'* some intel fake raid functions out of the box.

I have 2 raid 1 arrays, but have a separate boot drive. This is now >5 or 6 years old, and at the time I didn't know or couldn't get it to boot off of the raid array, hence the boot drive: But I prefer having a boot drive away from data these days.

Perhaps try one of the live iso's and see how everything is detected. You should be able to get it all working, but how simple or hard that will be, I can't say.

*I say repaired, as we are still using dmraid for intel fake raid, when we should be using mdadm: Hopefully Mageia 6 will see this put right.

[hankivy]

My system is running Mageia 5 with two identical hard drives with all partitions being RAID1, except SWAP. It was Mageia 4 until last week.
That includes the boot partition. I also install the boot loader on both drives. Other users run RAID5 on all partitions,
except the /boot partition. The /boot partition must be RAID1.
See the topic https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7975.

[fizzeruk]

OK..

Thanks for Input, and link..

I always use MDADM now, latest build is great for Intel fakeraid.

I may, (IF I can pull together enough backup media), completely re design the whole scheme. A separate 2.5" boot drive may be the easy way to go.

I will post my progress.

Cheers,

[xboxboy]

That's great that you've been able to get mdadm to work: I tried a while ago without success.

I'm sure the dev team would love your input on that

[fizzeruk]

I will input and make a thread on it.

'get mdadm to work' is tenuous.. As the past post states, still sometime required manual intervention to get them into a RW state at boot.

Actually looking forward to going back to this, project was on hold for a wile while I got my PI 2 CarPC installed.

I am SURE I will be starting a HELP!! thread after the weekend.