Help develop Ubuntu's Installer

[Rich43]

I have a personal problem with Ubuntu 7.10 which I think is a pretty frustrating issue and it is pretty much the only reason I use OpenSuse (Its a nice distro but I like Ubuntu/Debian based distros more).

The nice thing about Linux is that you can find something that needs improving, code it, submit a patch.

Now, In Ubuntu 7.10 the installer appears to lack mdadm raid support (The raid partitions do not show up at all!), I am not sure about other raid's like intel, nvidia etc aswell (perhaps you guys can fill me in?). I believe it used to work in previous versions of Ubuntu until they decided to write their own partition editor.

I have some programming experience with python and various other languages and I think with some help/feedback I can get a patch created, perhaps some other coders here might want to help aswell? Just a note, Ubuntu's installer program is called ubiquity.

I have grown a love for my raid configuration and I don't want to do without it, because of its astonishing speed and easier file system management Perhaps we could make raid setups easy to create with Ubuntu.

 

[Rich43]

You could just but a proper RAID controller.

Mine doesnt need drivers and works fine with ubuntu. I have read somewhere they try not to support onboard RAID chips as they aint really worth it, or did i dream that? Not sure, anyway......

you do have the option to set up RAID in the installer when you select manual partitioning or you used to be able too. What level RAID was you looking at setting up?

Used to be able to. I'm perfectly happy with not caring about on board raid and just using Linux software raid... To be perfectly honest, Linux Software Raid is just as good as any other raid. I had a /dev/md0 drive set up and the Ubuntu installer didn't show it up at all (I guess its hard coded to look for hda/sda etc). On board raid is over rated, its not really even a hardware raid.

 

[Rich43]

The linux software raid is open source and anyone is free to start a driver project I just put windows xp on a spare old 120GB drive.. I like linux so much that I don't let windows have my raid!

Let me know if anyone finds a project that solves the windows problem because I am a bit interested in some interoperability.

 

[Rich43]

Whats your problem then? You definately dont need to use fakeraid then if theres only ubuntu on the two hard drives. Lookup fakeraid first, the reason they took it out of development is because its uselss... Ubuntu can already software raid from kernel, why would you want another driver layer inbetween?

//Edit: In fact there read that.

Yes, Fakeraid is useless but Fakeraid isnt the same as a linux software raid.
with a linux software raid, you use the mdadm tool to create and manage it.
"Ubuntu can already software raid from kernel" <-- the Ubuntu GUI installer does not support this anymore, you try it in the Ubuntu 7.10 Live CD Installer.

I've used debootstrap to install Ubuntu (and Debian) into RAID schemes that the installer doesn't support. The installer doesn't seem to like me anyway
This method is far more flexible and can me used to setup netboot environments and vm installations in image files, etc.

setup your block device on which to store the root fs :

ie : mdadm --assemble --auto=md /dev/md0 /dev/sd{a,b,c,d}1
or : dmraid -ay

optionally LVM2 it up (it's nice), mkfs, and mount and run debootstrap :

mke2fs -j /dev/md0
mount /dev/md0 /mnt/ubuntu -o data=journal,noatime
debootstrap --arch i386 gutsy /mnt/ubuntu http://ubuntu.virginmedia.com/archive/
cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/ubuntu /etc
LANG= chroot /mnt/ubuntu /bin/bash
apt-get update
apt-get install ubuntu-desktop linux-image mdadm dmraid lvm2
update-initramfs
exit
cp /mnt/ubuntu/{initrd*,vmlinuz*} /boot/

Yes, thats the workaround but I want the GUI installer to be able to set up and install Ubuntu on a multiple device raid (mdadm) like OpenSuse can. I am tempted to try what you did myself.. at least I might end up with Ubuntu back on my box instead of OpenSuse.

In other news, I have been reading the python source code to Ubiquity and it looks like the problem is in the partman software package that ubiquity depends on. If theres anyone else here that can help, feel free to report back with any parts of the source code I should be looking at etc...

 

[Rich43]

Last time I checked Ubuntu's 7.10 Alternate CD, It no longer supported all that fancy raid stuff, but I will look again soon + feel free to prove me wrong!

They made some pretty drastic changes to the partition editor in recent releases.