Installation of Software RAID with Debian Sarge

This note is provided so that I can re-do what I did easily without going thru pages of google search results. In fact, as of writing, there is no article that clearly identify the steps to build SATA RAID arrays when installation.
Note that, upon requests, I may translate this document into traditional Chinese.
I purchased an ASUS AP130-E1 which came with a Promise FastTrak SATA 150 TX4 (with chip PDC-20319) and two SATA hard disks. To make it as a server, I installed Debian v3.1r0. The Debian installation CD was started using linux26 and these two SATA HDs were recognized as sda and sdb. To make these two HDs as a RAID-1 array, the following (rough) steps were taken:

1. partition sda into sda1 (as /), sda5 (as /usr), sda6 (as /var), sda7 (as swap), sda8 (as /tmp), and sda9 (as /home). It is important to note that you have to make the type of these partitions as 'fd' (i.e. raid partition)
2. partition sdb identical to sda.
3. create software RAID-1 (based on Serial ATA (SATA) chipsets — Linux support status, the Promise card is actually a faik raid controller and thus only software RAID can be used).
4. In my system, I created md0 (sda1 and sdb1), md1 (sda5 and adb5), md2 (sda6, sdb6), md3 (sda7, sdb7), md4 (sda8, sdb8), and md5 (sda9, sdb9).
5. After md* were created, you need to define the partition type and mount point for each md. In my system, md0 is defined as ext3 and mounted in '/', md1 as reiserfs and '/usr', md2 as reiserfs and '/var', md3 as swap, md4 as reiserfs and '/tmp', and md5 as reiserfs and '/home'.
6. To make both SATA hard disks bootable, I marked both /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1 as bootable.

If you wish to use LVM so that your partitions become resizable, please refer to LVM HOWTO.
If you have a Debian system up and running and simply wish to make SATA hard disks as RAID arrays, please refer to an article entitled Installing Debian with SATA based RAID.