Server Software

Notice: The following tutorial is not entirely accurate. Users who are not comfortable using the command line interface can install a GUI or if necessary, install Microsoft Windows to setup their volumes and services.
We have chosen  Linux because of its  stability, security and the vast amount of free programs & utilities at our disposal to build the optimal system: Hardware & software.

Setting up the OS: Ubuntu Server 7.10

  1. Download the latest version of Ubuntu Server Edition (7.10 as of writing)
  2. Burn the downloaded ISO disk image onto a CD.
  3. Place the CD in the server machine and boot to from your BIOS
  4. During setup, select LAMP, OpenSSH and Samba packages
  5. Restart Ubuntu after the first boot to finalize the initialization scripts

    6. sudo reboot

Partition Setup

  1. Partition your storage disks (not the same disk that holds your OS) using cfdisk with file system type: FD (Linux Raid Autodetect)
  2. Make sure your partitions show up when you list your devices, otherwise you may need to reboot

Software RAID 5 Setup [Detail]

  1. Install mdadm raid tool

    2. sudo apt-get install mdadm

  2. Create a raid 5 array called md0 with partition members sdb1, sdc1 and sdd1

    3. mdadm --create --level=5 --chunk=256 --verbose /dev/md0 --raid-devices=3 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1

  3. Save the configuration

    4. mdadm --misc --detail --brief /dev/md0 > mdadm.config

  4. To check your settings use

    5. cat /proc/mdstat

LVM Setup [Detail]

  1. Install LVM2

    2. sudo apt-get install lvm2

  2. Install xfsprogs

    3. sudo apt-get install xfsprogs

  3. Define a physical volume from the raid array md0

    4. pvcreate /dev/md0

  4. Create a volume group called “arrays” with a physical extent of 1 GB

    5. vgcreate -s 1G arrays

  5. Create a logical volume from group “arrays” called “storage”

    6. lvcreate -l 465 arrays -n storage

  6. Edit the /etc/fstab (startup) file

    7. /dev/arrays/storage /share xfs defaults 0 0

Growing LVM Space

  1. Define a physical volume from a new raid array md1

    2. pvcreate /dev/md1

  2. Extend the volume group

    3. vgextend number of PE needs to be specified!!!

  3. Extend logical volume group

    4. lvextend

  4. Have the XFS filesystem use all physical capacity on the logical volume device

    5. xfs_growfs