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I am planning to setup a CentOS7 server with software RAID. Since the CentOS7 installer isn't particularly good at preparing the disks, I wonder if it would be OK to boot up a LinuxMint 18 live, do the partitioning and RAID assignment and then reboot in the CentOS7 installer and do the installation, skipping the partitioning part.

What worries me is that they seem to be packed with different versions of software for manipulating disks.

For example:

CentOS 7.4:

gdisk 0.8.6

mdadm 4.0-5

LinuxMint 18.3

gdisk 1.0.1

mdadm 3.3-2

  1. So, if I create the raid array on Mint live with an older version of mdadm, should I expect problems when CentOS tries to assemble that array with a newer version of mdadm?
  2. Will I be missing on features when I create the array with an older version of mdadm, like different default values, etc.?
  3. How about gdisk, but in the opposite direction?
Pavel Tankov
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  • Do you need to prepare the disks using the installer? Could you boot to a live CentOS environment and use the native mdadm before installing? I can't see that there would be compatibility issues but it's probably better to be consistent. – Simon Greenwood Feb 07 '18 at 12:42
  • I've never heard of live CnetOS. – Pavel Tankov Feb 07 '18 at 15:20
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    There are live images that work like Ubuntu/Linux Mint. They are tagged 'live' in the CentOS download mirrors. – Simon Greenwood Feb 07 '18 at 15:25
  • How so? CentOS 7 has the greatest interface one can imagine to prepare disks: Press Clrt-Alt-F2 and you get a root shell where you can do anything you wish with your disks. Alt-F6 and you are back in GUI. There is a button to reload the disks :-) – Martian Feb 08 '18 at 08:56
  • @SimonGreenwood Oh, stupid me! Yes, there is a live CentOS and yes, it worked. :) Thanks! – Pavel Tankov Feb 08 '18 at 13:14
  • @Martian But when you get to the console, there is no _gdisk_ and _mdadm_, and you can't install them with `yum install` like you could in a live session. – Pavel Tankov Feb 08 '18 at 13:15
  • Interesting... RHEL-7.4 installer has both mdadm and gdisk. Are you using "Server" product? (I do not know if RHEL and CentOS map 1 to 1 - there are Server, Workstation,... setups) – Martian Feb 12 '18 at 16:37
  • I am using the minimal ISO of CentOS. Maybe this is the reason? Are you using the full ISO? – Pavel Tankov Feb 13 '18 at 13:22

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