Exkurs: Configuring a software RAID upon interactive installation

If the area beyond Unknown contains one or more partition, check whether you want to retain, reuse, or delete it. Mind that you can only reuse partitions that are set up identically on all disks.

To delete a partition, click on it and then on the '-' sign at the bottom. At the end, all disks must either be empty or identically partitioned.

Use the "+" sign to add a partition. In the Mount Point field select 'biosboot' and set a size of 1 MiB.

A biosboot entry appears in the left New Fedora 41 Installation section on one of he disks.

Repeat it and you see a second entry, usually on the same disk.

Select the new entry and click on Modify at Device(s). In the device list select one of the other disks. Then select Update Settings.

Anaconda updates the list of partitions in the New Fedora 41 installation section so that the biosboot partition is now the first partition on different disks.

Repeat the step until all disks have a biosboot partition. This is necessary so that the system can boot from any of the other disks if the first disk fails.

Use the "+" sign to add a partition. The "Add a new Mount Point form" form opens up

The installation window refreshes and now shows a /boot/efi partition on the left side under SYSTEM and a number of properties for this partition on the right side.

Anaconda sets up an EFI partition on the first disk. But a RAID system must be able to boot from any of the available disks, not just the first one. Otherwise, the system would be paralyzed if that failed. One solution is to set up the EFI partition as a RAID as well.

Find the property Device Type and use the drop down list to change Standard partition to RAID. In the right side shows up a new selection box RAID level showing initially RAID1 (mirroring) in this example, because we have just 2 disks. Leave the file system as “EFI System Partition”. Choose an optional label, e.g. sysefi, and And trigger “Update Settings” further below.

# (comming soon)

Tick the "+" sign and a form "Add a new Mount Point" opens again.

A new mount point is created on sda1. On the right side there is a form to show and modify some properties. Find the property Device Type and use the drop down list to change Standard partition to RAID. In the right side shows up a new selection box RAID level showing initially RAID1 (mirroring) in this example, because we have just 2 disks. Choose the RAID level you wish and then click on Update Settings further down.

Anaconda updates the form and the list beyond New Fedora 41 Installation. The sdx partition is gone and replaced by a (device) name, the same one you find in the property form on the right side. In the form you can add a label, e.g. sysboot, if you like, and Update Settings again.

Use the "+" sign to add another Moint Point

Anaconda creates a new mount point. From the context Anaconda guesses to assign the device type LVM, to create a Volume Group using the default name fedora appending the systems hostname, if you already configured the network, and to assign the device name root. The size of 15 GiB is the same as a default configuration would do. That’s a lot of work that Anaconda saves you.

Now you have the opportunity the adjust Anacondas guessings.

The most important one is to adjust the RAID level. Anaconda configures a LVM without RAID by default. Tick the modify button of the LVM property.

Select a proper RAID level and check the size policy. Automatic means that the size of the partition and the Volume Group is just as large as the Logical Volumes you create with Anaconda here. That provides you a maximum of flexibilty to later adjust the storage organisation but also involves some additional steps to handle the Volume Group and its partition when you want do add a Logical Volume and file system. Alternatively you can set the Volume Group to maximum size, so you can add Logical Volumes with a minimum of effort, or a fixed size that fulfills your foreseeable requirements and leaving some space for later adjustments that come up as a surprise.

Finally, you can further customize the storage organization to your requirements.

Some adminmistrators like to confine the /var/log subdirectory in its own Logical Volume. This prevents excessive logging from filling up the root file system. But also vice versa, that excessive outputs of a program fill up the root file system to such an extent that no more log outputs can be saved and troubleshooting is made more difficult.