[TriLUG] software raid

[Michael Hrivnak]

It's interesting that software raid came up on the list this week, as I've 
just finished a long battle to move my server from a solitary drive to a 
3-drive software raid setup.

Mandrake 10.0 Official, 3x80gb drives, RAID1 for /boot and RAID 5 for 
everything else.

I found that the only way I could get the system to boot was to hack 
initrd.img to load the raid modules and assemble the arrays.  It seems like 
there should be an easier way.  Do other distros offer more support for this?

My abbreviated list of steps:

1. Create raid arrays to correspond with current partitions
2. Boot a live CD and use "cp -avx" to copy partitions to new raid arrays
3. Modify fstab and lilo.conf
4. Hack initrd.img (mkinitrd would not create a suitable image, despite being 
pointed at the modified fstab)
5. Mount new boot partition to /boot under the live CD and "lilo 
-C /path/to/lilo.conf

Is there an easier way?  Is it easier to do a fresh install on raid arrays?

Thanks,
Michael