Installing Linux on RAID volumes?

[cpjust]

Hi,
I recently tried installing Fedora 8 (x64 and i386) on my system which has 3 HD's in half RAID 0 & half RAID 5. Windows installs without any problems, but Fedora was giving me an error:

Error opening /dev/mapper/isw_bfcbgbjieg_RAID_5: No such device or address

My system is using an ASUS P5K3 Deluxe motherboard which uses an Intel ICH9R Southbridge chip for onboard RAID.

After doing some googling, I found that I could get past the error by pressing Tab during install and adding "nodmraid" to the install options. However, when I do that, it sees 3 individual HD's instead of the RAID volumes I created in the BIOS.

Is there any way to get it to see and install on the RAID volumes? Are there any other Linux distributions that might work better with RAID?

 

[Kozusnik]

First check to see if there are RAID "divers" for Linux from the destributor of that motherboard/controller. There's an option to load a driver disk when the install starts. Second, I've had pretty good luck with the megaraid module for Linux.

Mark

 

[cpjust]

I'm not sure what the "megaraid module" is. Does it come as a Fedora package, or do I have to download and install it separately?

I was able to install Fedora finally by adding "dd nodmraid" to the startup options and sticking in a Linux driver disk. Unfortunately I had to change my SATA BIOS setting from RAID to ACPI, and then configure Software RAID completely in Linux... :-(

I decided to go with a 3-disk RAID-0 swap volume and a 3-disk RAID-5 root volume.

 

[Kozusnik]

It's just a command line install option (<F6>) on RH AS4. I prefer *buntu over the RH variants, but I assume Fedora should have that as an option also.

Mark

 

[donb01]

I'm interested in this question too as I am planning to build a new server with a bit more redundancy as soon as I pay off my last unexpected truck repair. I'm planning to use one of the ubuntu variants, but have not decided yet which one is the right one, and what hardware to buy so that I have no compatibility issues. My hope is to have a 2-drive mirrored SATA RAID configuration so that if one drive fails I don't lose everything. I have heard from some folks that promise is one of the better chipsets to try and find, or to buy the standalone controller.

My current server is not 'mission critical' in that it has mostly website content on it I can republish, but there is some calendar data and other stuff I wouldn't want to lose. I only have one HD now and an OnStream tape backup that I've never got to work right since I bought it. I blew the HD in there 3 or 4 years ago, but fortunately it was a temp related problem and I was able to recover all the data off the drive by running it between 2 'freezer paks'. I'm getting nervous about the age of the HD again.....

I want to run the ubuntu with all the LAMP stuff, but also need/want the KDE environment for some specific applications that need to run on that server, and all of the development kits so I can compile my add-ins and the like for the website. I know the new LTS version is due out in April so I'm kind of glad I waited.

 

[burtsbees]

I have trouble installing RH AS 2.1 on Compaq servers RAIDed, much less on a single disk without x conf messing up the geometry of my tftp5600 display...perhaps I'll start a post...

Burt

 

[Kozusnik]

I'll try to remember to get the specs for the servers I have set up and running.
Ubuntu 6.10 (x1)
Kubuntu 7.04 (x1)
RH AS 4 (x1)
RH 7.3 (x3)
Mandrake 9.1 (x1)
+ several pcs not raided.

All are RAID-5. The AS4 server has 16 GB of RAM (I think). I tried to use Kubuntu, but it would only recognize 8 GB of RAM on the 32 bit version. There is a bigmem option which I haven't tried yet.

Mark