I am trying to build a File Server with the current stable release of Debian
and the 2.6 kernel. I have 2 20 GB IDE drives to boot from and 9 45GB Ultra
Wide SCSI drives on 2 Adaptec 2940UW controllers.

I want to build a Debian file server with a software RAID array of SCSI
drives and a software RAID array of IDE drives. The IDEs are for booting and
OS partitions while the SCSI array will be for users files. The IDE array
will be RAID1 and the SCSI array will be RAID 5.

I've tried several installs and I always run into something that prevents
this from working. I have no problem with the boot RAID 1 array, but the
SCSI array is just refusing to work.

I managed to get 2 RAID 1 partitions for / and /home on the IDE drives. The
system boots up happy and all. My problem is with the 9 45 GB drives. I have
tried:

Installing the OS with out the SCSI drives attached. Once the OS was all
updated and loaded I tried to use mdadm to add the drives. mdadm would not
create /dev/md2. Out of desperation I used mknod to create /dev/md2 and
built a RAID 5 array with a etx3 filesystem, but upon reboot the device
disappeared. Making the device and mounting the fs failed.

I then reinstalled the whole thing and built all 3 RAID partition in the
installer. I now have a /dev/md2 device that persists, but the filesystem
does not. I can use mdadm to build the array and mkfs to make the
filesystem, but on reboot the automount fails because it tried before the
SCSI drives are found. Trying to mount by hand after booting fails to find a
valid OS.

Do I have to find 2 small SCSI drive just to boot to so the SCSI drives are
found at the necessary time? This is maddening! I've got a very similar Red
Hat 9 system working and it did not give me this much grief.

Any suggestion is appretiated.

Thanks,

Mark C