[How to] install Leopard on a software RAID
 

I've juste updated the wiki with this howto.

http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/9458/raidri8.png

The XBench score is not very good for a RAID but take a look at the sequential test.

Report success or failure here.

Any chance you could find/add a nforce4 raid driver in the next rev? For the onboard on the sata raid.
Most hw raid computers are nearly twice as fast as without raid.
I think Leopard install on raid would be very fast.

Does the above indicate that with software raid on one harddrive the hd is faster?
you need to show the baseline for comparison

Errrm, YA! Disk speed on Hackintoshes usually sucks by comparison! Get xbench - the baseline figures are there and they're all "100". A 289.25 is almost 3 times as fast as the baseline Mac Pro... Check the "xbench scores" thread to see what others are getting with "regular" internal HD's. Zephy's score is fairly amazing.

Zeph what mobo are you using is it nforce4?

I'm using an A8N5X NForce 4 mobo.

In that case you are scoring nearly double what I do for a single drive. Which I reckon is good going for any raid setup.
As soon as you come up with a way to do it without a working installation, I know I'll be giving it a go.

Here is my XBench without the software RAID.

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/4198/raid2mn9.png

That's why I say that the score is low for a RAID.

I wonder why my disk scores are so low compared to yours, the uncached write seems to be the biggest factor I get just over 1MB per sec.
I wonder if disc size is a big factor. I'm using an 80gig Seagate disc.

What's your SATA chipset ?

Nforce 4 ultra

Strange ... Maybe I'm lucky.

Maybe lol

Thanks for showing the baseline zeph.

So what do you think, any chance we could scrap up the hw raid driver. At the moment I have my main vista on A stripe raid on the nforce4, I mainly use it to record tv from a epg gide setup in Media centre. Im really liking using leopard on a extra ata drive i have, but when im using leopard I miss the recording of my shows.

I just installed VM Fusion and can use vista and the media center while in leopard thus letting me record my shows and use leopard at the same time, as long as I use a usbtuner.

The only letdown in this plan is at the moment having it all installed on a single drive is a major slowdown, and probably won't be able to record HD TV unless I can get it all onto the Raid stripe I have.

I really hope someone can port the nvraid driver to leopard before the next rev.

Thanks for any ideas you have.

i was wondering how hard it could be to make dmraid works on Mac OS ...

To boot into the software RAID you also can use the DVD but the kexts will be loaded from it.
That's why an already working installation is needed.

I'm trying to find another way ...

Ok I was wondering if a linux driver , which we could find that nv raid for linux would have anything to do with leopard driver. Maybe a cross between that and a regular raid driver from the install dvd would give us a working start.

If we could find a regular raid driver on the install cd, maybe we just need to patch the hardware device codes and tweek it a little.

By the way fusion runs great even on one ata drive, it has a unity setting that adds vista and leopard desktop together
Making a Leopsta desktop its pretty sweet all you apps and windows just open like any other program, and then the all minimise to the dock just like leopard apps.

HWRaid would make the install perfect, you would just wan't to go and get a quad core and The full 4gigs just to see how good you could get it!!

A step closer ... ZFS Software RAID .

As you can see performances are better !

http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/3277/raidzfsya9.png

DMRAID sounds cool. If you could get that working it would solve heaps of problems. There's plenty of info on the net about using it to get raid working on linux.

I hope you can get it working on Leopard.

The sequential is perfect more than double the base rate. That would make big file transfer fast within the array.

I found the info on installing ZFS in read/write mode, but its suggested that its a bit unstable and leads to crashes, probably when the disks loose sync, that happens about once every two months with my HWRaid array.

You'll have to test how stable it is to decide whether its worth adding to the install image.

Still hope there's some way to use the nvraid, though

I've not the skills to port dmraid from Linux to Mac (at least at the moment).

I don't know if you really take care of "Uncached read 256k" but its ... wow.

I will make a lot of tests with ZFS and see if it's really stable or unstable.

They are crazy high speeds for the uncached read, Does the whole system seem more responsive??
If you find its stable enough like three, four days uptime then I will be up for it.

Everthings installing so well on this install, just can't get the extension caches to keep all the kexts i want in them.

I always have to use -f at boot or the usbwireless stick, will not be mounted at start. If I unplug it then plug it back it works. but only using -f, makes it load already mounted.

But things look really promising with zfs I hope its stable.

Maybe if others read these posts somebody will know a bit about how to port dmraid to the mac.

Actually I can't install Leopard on this zfs RAID.
Mac OS Installer can't detect it. I'm trying to install Leo via Pacifist. But I think I will not be able to boot on it ...
So I can't say if the system is more responsive or not.

But I'm on it.

Sounds good, I eagerly await your findings

Good Luck

At http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/zfs/wiki/issues we can see :

Features in the Works

Bootable ZFS
Encrypted ZFS [ more info.. ]
Gzip support
Browsing .zfs snapshots

Grrr ...

I've understood why Mac OS Installer don't show the ZFS RAID.

Contrary to software Raid with Diskutil, creating a RAID with ZFS don't create an associated device node ...

I created one with mknod, like this "mknod b /dev/disk4 9 0" but I don't know how to attach the RAID ZFS to it ... Don't even know if it's possible ...

EDIT: In fact it seems to be possible with the following command "zfs create -V 50G "POOL"/mywol"

But this command is not implemented in MacOS and Linux ... only in Solaris.

I read your comments on installing raid via partitions rather than disks and was wondering if you thought it could be faster this way in raid 0 ? I thought if you could partition exactly the surface pallet size , you would have a different read arm for each partition, this might gain you a little speed. ( Only for multi pallet HD). I hope your getting a bit further in your zfs implement. If you find anyway to speed up the system using partitions please keep us informed.

Good Luck

I'm actually trying this :

1 - Create 2 partitions on one of the two disks intended to be used in RAID.

BOOT 1G with the following folders:
---> "/usr/standalone", "/Library/Preferences", "/System/Library/Extensions", "/System/LIbrary/CoreServices" and "/mach_kernel"

RAID 147,9 G

2 - Create a software RAID array with partition RAID 147,9 G and RAID1 148.9G.

3 - Install Leopard on the newly created RAID

4 - Make BOOT partition bootable.

5 - At boot type "-v rd=diskX" (which is the RAID array) and then add it in com.apple.Boot.plist

If it works the more annoying thing will be that /Volumes/Boot/System/Library/Extensions and /Volumes/RAID/System/Library/Extensions must be the same everytime.
(if you change a kext in RAID you must change it in BOOT too because the kexts loaded at boot will be those on BOOT ... not RAID !), same thing for the kernel.

EDIT : I found this ---> http://www.opensolaris.org/os/commun...fsboot-manual/
Maybe I can do this with Mac OS ? ... I'm on it.

For the ZFS implementation we must wait for a new release because booting from a ZFS partition is not implemented in the MacOS version.

It works !

Disk Speed Bench X

- Non RAID Volume "/Volumes/Leopard"

Elapsed time 8.116926 secs; transfer speed (66142147bytes/sec)

- RAID Volume "/Volumes/RAID"

Elapsed time 3.432911 secs; transfer speed (156389410bytes/sec)

thats great, does that mean you can boot off the zfs file system using the Darwin efi bootloader?
If yes then this is a great find. You should cut and paste the commands you used and make a guide.
I looked into the nforce raid drivers and found them for Linux, would these be any use in osx I imagine they
would be somewhat the same.

I'll get some drives out of an old pc I have and give the zfs raid a go, hopefully you get a chance to do a guide
soon, as I'm not sure which of the above solaris commands I need to use, and how much I need to change them.
I presume we get an install running first then make the zfs raid then copy the install to it then make it bootable.
do we need any zfs kexts or are the standard soft raid ones fine?

Eagerly waiting a guide!

Oups no ... No zfs at the moment.

The created RAID above is HFS+ with Diskutil but works without an existing installation ! The guide is on the wiki.
I've made some tests with a ZFS RAID and performances has not as high as XBench score shows us.

Finally (at least at the moment) I think the solution on the wiki is the easiest way to boost OSX performance until someone create a driver.

Thanks heaps for all the effort you are putting in, I'll probably give it a go soon, I always prefer a os on raid, the boost is always noticable.

Good Luck

hey, I tried to create a raid drive like you said, and after I drag the two parts of the raid in and press create, it waits for the disk to come online, then errors with "creating raid set failed , could not find raid"

Any ideas I'm eager to get it working but not sure how to go if I cant create the raid disk.

I'm using two same size ata disks, not sata.

Thanks for any ideas you have.

Ah yes I forgot to tell you.

In fact when I was trying RAID for a new installation I booted on a restored image of the ISO (on a partition) but ... with the extensions folder which contains AppleRAID.kext.

So it worked for me because this extension can be loaded but I tried with the DVD and as the extensions folder is not here, AppleRAID.kext is not loaded and ... cannot be loaded !

Thus the "How To" is a bit useless at the moment ... except if you restore the ISO on a spare partition.

I plan to add the Extensions folder and some others fix to a future ppf patch.

I have another install on a separate disk, how do I
Go about installing from an image/ ISO I'm a bit confused
do I need the kext on the install disk?

after I created the raid and it failed to come online I rebooted the cd and the raid I made was online
hopefully everything will be sweet from here. Maybe your guide is fine you just have to add reboot after making raid fails.

Still trying.....

now it says the raid drive is online but I can't mount it and it doesnt appear in the list to install on.

Maybe I'll need to boot like you said,
could you give me a few more details of how to boot with the raid kext included

Thanks

I can use a ppf if you can make one and reburn the disk, I'm still not sure how I make an image of the install disk and boot from it.

Can't I just force load the next using terminal before installing?

I got it to detect and its installing on the raid now.

I had to create the raid, fail with error, reboot cd this forces the raid.kext to load ,
then delete the raid and rebuild it, this time it Is successful and makes a raid partition that you can install on.

I'll tell you if it all works out and you can add a couple of lines to the wiki

Ok so I got it installed and nearly everything works.

A few notes for you wiki,

if using only the disk you need to restart after making the raid give an error, then delete and build the raid again and it will succeed and let you install.

A few of your commands in the wiki some little mistakes, you missed the . in ./standalone when adding the bootloader

when doing the mkdir commands, you list has one wrong, I think its the usr one you just forgot one directory when you wrote it down.

Other than that the guide is fine.

A few extra notes.
when changing the boot file it needs to be the one in BOOT directory not RAID Directory.

And when using -f the extentions that load are the ones in the boot partition not the raid partition, so when installing anything with kexts you need to install them in the BOOT drive not the RAID Drive.

I tried just copying the extentions folder into the boot drive after installing my graphics but it didn't work.
only installing the graphics in BOOT worked.

Maybe you have some more ideas on the extentions problem, I always seem to need to use -f for my usb wireless to auto connect.

Thanks heaps for the guide, for anyone else that wants to try it takes a little while but is well worth it.

Ok thanks a lot ! The wiki has been updated !

Thats ok, thanks heaps for the guide, The pc is so much faster and smoother, and to think the only thing faster is a proper desktop mac worth big bucks is very sweet.

I'll keep my eyes out to see if anyone comes up with a nvidia raid driver, its the only thing to make it sweeter.

My extentions seem ok now, and my wirless connects well, (without needing unpluging and repluging)

Just to clarify, The extentions that load with -f are the ones in the BOOT partition ? so kexts need to be added to that list as well don't they?

Thanks again, Im suprised more people arn't giving it a go it really beefs up the system.

Good Luck

I´ve installed and it works great, nice guide guys!!!

http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/5377/osxraidlr2.png

The wiki should be updated on this.
The problem with this method is all of the kexts in the actually booted OS are seen as not loaded
by OSX and the system always wants to rebuild the boot cache when restarting or shutting down.

Only 3 files are needed on the boot drive: 1) Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.Apple.boot.plist
2) System/Library/Extensions.mkext
3) mach_kernel
This way when you add kexts you add them as you normally would and only have to copy a refreshed Extensions.mkext to the boot drive
after adding or removing kexts.

Also if you multiboot many OS's on different hard drives often when doing a warm reboot hard drives can be ordered differently so it's much
better to boot your Raid array by UUID.

You get the UUID "Unique ID" of your Raid array by running- "diskutil listraid" in terminal
then you simply add: boot-uuid=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX to the com.Apple.boot.plist
as a Kernel Flag instead of rd=disk2

Also to make it cleaner you should create an entry using uuid of boot part in /etc/fstab to prevent
the boot drive from automounting. That way the 1GB boot partition won't show up on your desktop.
If you ever need access to the partition you just mount it using diskutility. Just add the line
UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx none hfs rw,noauto 0 0
to etc/fstab of the RAID array.
Of course in above examples where you see xxxxxxxxxxxxx you would insert your own UUID.

Very cool. I didn't try this method yet. I will take a look later.

Thanks !

From Netkas forum (credits to Whack)LINK
It doesn´t works for me, i don´t know if i´m doing something wrong.

My Boot partition UUID=39C6AC62-1C32-3ED3-9782-D62CD2FD6FBA and adding the line into the etc/fstab i don´t see any change.

my boot partition:

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/7876/bootqb4.png

Where is the howto, I searched the wiki and this thread but can't find it?

what are the specs of the drives you are using?

I am trying to resize the GUID partition that has the RAID slice on it. (not resizing the RAID slice itself). but disk utility is soft-stuck at "Preparing to remove volume"

I checked the logs but there was nothing useful there.

is there another GUID partition utility?

Is this howto still available anywhere? From the name, it sounds like exactly what I need, but I can't find it on the forum or wiki. I'd love to know if it's possible to boot Leopard off of software raid on a hackintosh.

weres the wiki? or instructions?

Thanks

Hey!

I may be, and prolly am, stupid, but I can't find this guide on the Wiki. Where is it?