OpenSUSE Linux Rants

This evening, I took a few minutes to appreciate how cool SUSE Linux 10.1 is. I did a fresh text-based install on a box with three 40 Gig HDDs, creating a software RAID-5 system. I wanted to see how hard it was. With no X11 install, just purely text-based, it took me about 28 minutes total. Granted, it was a very minimalistic install, consisting of about 450 Meg, and required only Disc 1. If you need a quick server, all you need is that first disc, baby.

Here’s the quick run-down of the RAID-5. It’s a way to make sure your data doesn’t get lost. It provides redundancy for your data. You need at least 3 of the same sized partitions. I had three 40 Gig partitions. You take the number of partitions and subtract 1. That leaves me with 2. Then, you multiply that number by the size of the partitions. That is 80. The final size of my RAID is 80 Gigabytes. If one of those babies goes down, you don’t lose any data. You just throw another 40 Gig partition in there, and it rebuilds your data. Very sweet. I could tell you more about it, but I got most of my information from here.

I thought it would be cool to try out the RAID-5 software raid. I was going to use it as an RSYNC backup server. If it ends up being really stable, I might slap it in as my main web server. It’s about 48 times the machine that that one is, anyway.

Anyone have experience with this software RAID setup?