I see comments that people are using software raid (md rescue disk, set up the EFI partition (which you have already allocated) and install grub on thadm), but I don't see any good instructions for how to do it. I just finished a software raid install, so I'm putting instructions here for the next person.
NOTE: There is the CLI way to set up the partitions, and the graphical way to set up the partitions. Below is the graphical way, but see "If it breaks during the install" section at the end of this document for the beginning of the discussion of CLI related ways of doing things.
Note: One of the problems that we will run into is that once we create the raid device is that we wont be able to just say "use the new raid device and do your automatic partitioning thing using that". We will have to make partitions manually.
The first 1 meg on a drive should normally be reserved for MBR related things. You may end up needing this space if UEFI does not go well for you. Some partition editors automatically reserve the first meg for you in some way. The current version of the blivet-gui partition editor that Qubes installer uses appears to set the default for the starting block of new partitions to be after the first meg, so as long as you leave the defaults, you don't need to create a 1 meg partition for MBR (and then do nothing with it, just so nothing else uses it)
| Field | Setting |
|---|---|
| Device type | partition |
| size | 1 Gib |
| Filesystem | "EFI System partition" |
| label | EFI |
| mountpoint | /boot/efi |
| encryption | no. do not encrypt the EFI partitions |
| Field | Setting |
|---|---|
| Device type | partition |
| size | 2 Gib |
| Filesystem | "ext4" |
| label | boot |
| name | boot |
| mountpoint | /boot |
| encryption | no. do not encrypt the boot partition |
| Field | Setting |
|---|---|
| Device type | partition |
| size | Take all the space |
| Filesystem | "physical volume LVM" |
| name | set name to a random string |
| encryption | yes! if you want encryption, enable it here |
| Field | Setting |
|---|---|
| Device type | "LVM2 Logical Volume" |
| size | 10 Gib |
| Filesystem | swap |
| label | swap |
| name | swap |
| encryption | no. do not encrypt (already encrypted) |
| Field | Setting |
|---|---|
| Device type | "LVM2 Logical Volume" |
| size | take it all |
| Filesystem | ext4 |
| label | root |
| name | root |
| mountpoint | / |
| encryption | no. do not encrypt (already encrypted) |
At this point click "done". it should complain at the bottom of the screen. You can view the issues, and it should say something like: "/boot" is on a RAID volume, but EFI is not! If your boot drive goes down you wont be able to boot.
EFI filesystem is not intended for RAID, so thats not a real option. And undoing raid for /boot won't help the situation. So you can ignore that.
However, if it says something else, like 'you forgot to put a root mountpoint for "/" ', then you should go fix that.
After all problems are resolved: 1. Click "done" 2. If nothing happens, Click "done" again 3. Start the installation
WARNING: 1. It did not save the partitions you just set up. If you reboot now it will be gone. 2. Going back into the "Installation Device" will clear out all the work you just did.
If it breaks during the install, it probably write the partitions, so after the reboot: 1. Hit control-alt-F2 2. If you can't read the screen because the text is too small on a high-res screen, type: setfont solar24x32{enter}
Note: Many other CLI instructions that can be typed here are available from https://web.archive.org/web/20230316180945/https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/custom-install/
Now the fun part. If you hit "rescan" to get the graphical partitioner to acknowledge the RAID drives, the "rescan" process will deactivate the RAID drives!
Basically switch back and fourth between doing "mdadm --assemble --scan" and being in different partitioning screens until something works. I believe what worked for me was doing "mdadm --assemble --scan" after clicking "Installation Device" and before clicking "advanced custom - blivet-gui", then "Done" (to get to the advanced screen). Whatever I did, when i got to blivet-gui, it recognized the raid disks and I was able to reassign the mount points and then start the install (which worked this time)
You'll get the "out of box" configuration options. Under "Advanced configuration" select "use existing LVM thin pool" with "qubes_dom0" (the only option) and LVM thin pool "Pool00" (the only option).
This might mean we did not need to manually create the thin-pool lvm thing from the partition editor??
This section is not complete. For now, see https://web.archive.org/web/20230316180945/https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/custom-install/ for ideas
You can type cat /proc/mdstat to check if both drives are working. (Note: there is a good chance it's still syncing the drive at this moment)
You will probably want to write a script that checks it and notifies you if there is a problem, and then put it the script in cron. something like this:
NUMBER_OF_RAIDS=2
#NOTE: You can run a test of this, to make sure nootifications are working by setting NUMBER_OF_RAIDS to more then you have
if [ $NUMBER_OF_RAIDS != `grep '[[]UUU*[]]' /proc/mdstat | wc -l` ]
then
notify-send --expire-time=360000 "RAID issue!" "A drive may have failed, or other raid issue. (or you have NUMBER_OF_RAIDS set wrong). do: cat /proc/mdstat to see details"
exit
fi
exit
Once it's installed, it would be cool to mount the 2nd efi partition as /boot/efi2 and adjust the grub installer to install to both partitions. As it stands, if your boot drive goes out, then you will have to boot to a rescue disk, set up the EFI partition (which you have already allocated) and install grub on the other disk