[Sussex] Debian and Software RAID and hello

[Al Bennett]

Hi Guys

Firstly, apologies for not being around on the list or at Moots for what 
must be a year!  The old ME has thrown me around a bit this year, and on the 
ups I always seem to be away or busy to coincide with the Moots.  Still, I 
promise to chip in on the list more often!

Anyway, I have a project to be keeping me busy with in the next weekish 
(after building a Windows XP box (the money's ok)).  I need to build a cheap 
and Linuxful small business type server.  I've ordered the bits (which I'm 
hoping are all vaguely compatible), and stuff should arrive tomorrow (it is 
Ebuyer though...).  I've ordered two 120Gb SATA disks which I'm hoping to 
make into a RAID mirror.  I thought there might be some more useful 
documentation on Raid available considering it's popularity but I can't 
really get straight answers to anything related to it!

I hoping to stick Sarge on this and have it all just work, but I'm pretty 
sure it's not that simple...

The mobo is a GA-8IG1000MK with an Intel 82801EB southbridge, which may or 
may not include some form of RAID (I'm a bit baffled), either way I'm happy 
to use software raid on JBOD (I'm picking up the lingo!).

Now, in the reading up I've been doing there seems to be this kernel stuff 
called 'md' and a user space control thing mdadm, however that all seems to 
be a bit old hat.  I read something about it not taking care of bad blocks 
or something.

However, I did find this great sounding thing called EVMS (evms.sf.net) 
which seems to do everything including toast making.  However I'd need to do 
some kernel compiling, which I've never really done.  How easy is adding 
EVMS to a standard Sarge install?  Can I set up an array at installation 
time or do I raidify a standard installation (I have another 120Gb IDE disk 
to play with, if needed)?

Also, whichever route I go, how do I handle booting from an array, and 
handling a failed disk (for booting)?

Help!

Al