On Wed, 2008-11-26 at 12:06 +0100, Hans de Goede wrote:
This patch removes a special case when /boot (or / without a separate /boot) is
on mdraid. For some reason we only allow installing grub to the mdX device then
instead of allowing both the mbr of the 1st disk and the device holding /boot.
I've searched through the anaconda history and this special handling of mdraid
/boot has been there since before Feb. 2002, it was inherited from before booty
was introduced and it does not seem to make sense. Either we cannot have /boot
on mdraid at all (in all cases except for raid1) or we can have /boot on dmraid
(in case of raid1) and then it does not matter if the bootstrap of grub starts
on the mbr or on the first sector of a partition.
The reason we install to the mdX device is so that if your disk dies,
the bootloader install is mirrored[1] to both disks. So while it is
technically possible to install to the mbr of the first disk, doing so
loses the redundancy of the RAID install.