How to install Linux on a Bare Bone Server from Tranquil PC, with mirrored disks and logical volumes.
Goal
When replacing an old server-PC , the new one had to fulfill the following requirements:
- reliable
- server: central applications (http, sql) that can be managed remote (telnet or ssh).
- NAS server: safe [shared] disk-space for other PC's
- reliable
- Linux development system: compilers etc.
- database with limited applications
- reliable
- flexible disk usage
- low-power: no fancy graphics needed etc.
- reliable
Introduction
The Tranquil Bare Bone Server (BBS2 advanced) is choosen for the hardware,
for the ability to contain 5 disks, and even more on USB.
It includes hardware mirroring, which is not used because
it requires paires of equal disks.
Ubuntu Linux is used as Operating system (replaces Debian that works fine, but seems end-of-life).
It allows mirroring of disk partitions, allowing us to use a any disk available,
not necesserally paired.
For reliability, all data is mirrored:
- the boot disk
- the root disk
- any data disk
The system can survive a crash on any of the disks,
even a boot partition.
LVM (logical volume manager) is used to turn
available odd-shaped physical disks into usable virtual disks.
Why this site
First of all, it is my method of organizing my notes.
Now I can find, and even read them again sometime.
The need for that is emphasized by the lack of information on the Internet
about Grub2. That costs a lot of time ...!
First a small description of the BBS server (hardware),
mirroring and logical volumes (software):
About the BBS2
Mirroring, logical volumes, virtual disks
Installation
The rest of his manual describes how to to install Linux
with mirrored and logical volumes,
For mirroring you need 2 or more disks,
not necesseraly equally sized.
USB disks can be included in mirrors as well.
Using locical volumes,
there is no relation anymore between the physical disk sizes,
and the used virtual disk sizes anymore.
You can add/replace physical disks when available,
and you can resize logical disks later when desired.
(As long as the total of logical disks sizes is smaller than half the total of physical disk size (mirrored, remember ?).)
The steps are:
1. Dedicate an install-disk
2. Download Ubuntu
3. Connect a keyboard, mouse, and video.
4. Bios settings
5. Installing Ubuntu from memory stick
6. Connect to the Internet
7. Download scripts from this site
8. Bios settings
9. Partitioning disks
11. Convert the system
16. Reboot
20. Printing
21. Samba shares
22. Email
24. Partitioning disks manually
80. Users and groups (local info only)
91. Errors and problems
