[gentoo-user] RAID/LVM machine - install questions

[Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com>]

Hi,
   I'm starting to put together a server-type machine with multiple purposes:

1) MythTV server
2) General backups for another fast machine I'm going to build
3) Wife's new desktop

   Since all of these requirements are pretty modest but I want high
reliability I'd like to do software RAID with (I think) LVM on top of
that. I've not decided yet exactly what RAID type to use, and I know
nothing about LVM, so I'm reading here to learn:

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/LVM
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/lvm2.xml

   The LVM Install doc is pretty clear about not putting these in LVM:

/etc, /lib, /mnt, /proc, /sbin, /dev, and /root

which seems sensible. From an install point of view I'm wondering
about RAID and how I should treat /, /boot and swap? As I'm planning
on software RAID it seems that maybe those part of the file system
should not even be part of RAID. Is that sensible? I always want /
available to mount the directories above. /boot on RAID means (I
guess) that I'd need RAID in the kernel instead of modular, and why do
I need swap on RAID?

   The most important task of this machine is to keep data safe. If
the machine has a hardware problem and is down for a day or two that's
not going to be a big problem as long as the Myth recordings, my
wife's home directory and the backups I'm doing and placing on the
machine are relatively safe. the processor is going to be WAY overkill
with 8 cores but it hardly makes financial sense to go smaller as
maybe I can even run some computer cycles on it, like building binary
packages for my other machines or something like that.

   Interested in whatever thoughts folks have about the best way to
set this up. If I haven't outlined the requirements well enough let me
know. I'm at least a week from starting to build the hardware so
there's no rush on this but maybe comments will effect motherboard
selection, etc.

Thanks,
Mark