I have a 2002 Compaq Proliant DL380 that has a hardware RAID controller Smart2 Raid and I was able to build a simple RAID0 volume from 4 SCSI drives I have on the machine. The RAID builds fine during the POST but then when I boot from the Debian CD, it does not see anything for me to partition at all. I tried then a CENTOS 4.4 CD and the only thing it had to do was initialize the RAID volume and then it installed on it no problem. I was going to try Ubuntu Server CD tomarrow but do you guys know what the problem is?

In CENTOS, the volume shows up like /dev/ida/c0d0p1.

Is there a way to get Debian installed on this Compaq machine? I am using Etch if that makes a difference.

Apparently Debian still has issues with RAID and/or SCSI devices. The only advise I can give you: use a IDE harddrive for the system to reside on, and the RAID volume(s) for /home. It saves you from install-nightmares, and those when the system fails... Performance-wise it really doesn't make a big difference, as most read/write actions will be in the users home dir's. Could be useful to put /var/log also on that RAID volume...

Another very good possibility is to make a driver disk for the controller, which is far better. Using a physical hard drive for install purposes is fine if it helps, but you certainly do want more than just your /home on the raid controller going forward. I would also advise against RAID 0 as it has no fault tolerance, ie lose one disk and lose everything, but that's your call.

In any case, download the tar.gz driver or kernel module from the smart2 people, and extract it to some type of drive, floppy, usb stick, whatever. The boot process will give you the chance to add additional modules, and that's where you want to add the modules from them. That should allow the installer to see your hardware controller, and install from there.

Peace,
JimBass

Today I downloaded Sarge from Debian rather than Etch and it worked fine. I tried it with the default 2.4 sarge kernel and also with the 2.6.8 sarge kernel and it recognized the controller fine so I find that odd that Etch would not have that built in the but old Sarge did.

Anyways - she is up and running!

Watch yourself when Etch goes stable then. If the upgrade/update process does a kernel, you may be in trouble. Then again, since you have functional modules now, it might keep it. I don't remember having problems with hardware that needed a 3rd party module when stable jumped from Woody to Sarge, so it might be cool.

Peace,
JimBass

In 3 years when Etch becomes officially "stable" I hope to be fine.