Intro
As far as I am aware, it is not possible to install Debian 11 directly onto a software raid partition, because this is a “chicken-egg” problem.
To explain: the software raid requires some parts of the Linux Operating System in order to function. In particular, I am thinking about “mdadm”, although there may be other software raid “things” which could be used in place of mdadm.
At risk of laboring the point, if mdadm is used to define and run a software raid, Linux must be running for madam to work. That means it is not possible to boot from a madam software raid partition, at least as far as I am aware.
Previous Systems
I am about to install a new Debian OS onto a new machine I have built. This question has arrisen because I want to know if there is a better way to setup Debian than what I have done previously.
Previously I have installed Debian onto a single drive, then created a Raid 1 madam array, and then moved the /home/ folder to that software raid partition. This results in a system which has Raid 1 resiliency only on the /home folder.
/home is an obvious candidate to move, because:
- It can be moved (it might be the case that some mount points cannot be moved)
- It is an obvious candidate for data which one would want to be resilient to failure, because it is the usual location for user data, eg documents. (In my case, source code files.)
Question
Is there a better way to setup a Linux system with Raid redundancy?
For example, is it possible to install some kind of minimal bootloader onto the first (non-redundant) drive, and then put the majority of the Operating System files, including the users home folder(s) onto the Raid partition?
Further to this, is there a “standard” way of setting up a Linux OS with Raid? Would moving just the /home partition be considered to be a “normal” approach by professional system admins? Or would this be an “unsual” setup and typically something else would be done?
