This article describes how to setup a Linux system that can boot directly from a software RAID-1 device using GRUB. Even if one of the disks in the RAID array fails, the system can still boot. The example uses Fedora Core 4.
System configuration
The test system is equipped with two 4GB IDE hard disks, one connected as master device on first IDE channel (/dev/hda), the other connected as master device on second IDE channel (/dev/hdc). A DVD-ROM reader is connected as slave device to the first IDE channel (/dev/hdb).
The goal is to setup a RAID-1 device to mount as / and to boot from. Another RAID-1 device will be used as swap, to have a fault tolerant page swapping.