RAID with EVMS

summary
This article shows you how to install your gentoo system using livecd to create a raid for your partitions using evms.

purpose
It is a lot easier to use evms to set up and create your file systems than to do it manually with several of the howtos floating around the internet.

EVMS status
You should be aware of the status of EVMS. As far as I can tell EVMS is unsupported.

EVMS status.

A 2007 Gentoo EVMS discussion EVMS.

install
boot livecd

let it log into the default 'gentoo' account

bring up the web browser to confirm you are on the internet. If not follow the instructions http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1#book_part1_chap3

bring up a terminal

sudo su -

evmsgui

Review this section of the official manual for suggested partition sizes/layout etc...:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1#book_part1_chap4

delete/create segments for boot swap slash and any other partitions you want.

action->create->segment choose drive set size. approx 100mb for boot, several gigs/number of drives participating in raid for /usr /var /tmp /home, etc...

you may want to mirror (raid1) boot. should be bootable (button) and primary (button)

you can raid0 or raid5 slash and the other file system bearing segments

action->create->region for your raids. Select all that participate with ctl-leftclick

action->create->evms volume boot with name 'boot' as a primary partition with ext2 type probably of about 100mb size

action->create->evms volume other fs's with appropriate names ('slash' 'var' 'tmp' 'home' etc...)

action->create->evms volume swap partitions. they should be small, numerous and spread around on the disks. They should *not* be raided as the system will automatically spread data around all over them.

right click on various volumes under the volume tab and create the file systems desired (ext2 on boot, swapfs on swaps, and I prefer xfs on others). Would be a good idea to at least bad sector scan swap areas to avoid unexpected crashes.

if you have a lot of disk you my want to keep a lot of it unallocated for future resizing, snapshotting, etc... of existing partitions.

right click on volumes and mount them under appropriate places under /mnt/gentoo

follow some other directions:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1#book_part1_chap5

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1#book_part1_chap5

use exiting kernel/modules

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-tipsntricks.xml#livecd-kernel

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1#book_part1_chap7

configuring (fstab, etc..)

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1#book_part1_chap8