Hi all. I'm new to Linux, and this forum. And I'm getting started to install GCC developement environment for my ARM9 embeded system.

The motherboard in my PC is ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe bought last spring. It has an nVidia nForce 4 chipset and a Silicon Image Si3132 RAID controller.

By setting up the BIOS I'm able to use two 160GB HDD's in RAID0 mode as a 320GB tripe.

Speaking of Windows, it won't recognize this Si3132 either. I have to boot with the ASUS driver CD and make a floppy disk with RAID driver inside. And at the beginning of the installation of Windows XP I can press the F6 key to specify this driver floppy.

Things are different with Linux. When I boot with the Linux installation CD, this window appeared after a few steps:

| Warning |

No hard drives have been found.
You probably need to manually
choose device drivers for the
for the installation to succeed. Would
you like to select drivers now?

| Yes | | No |

I'd been to the Silicon Image official site and downloaded the Si3132 drivers for RedHat Linux 4 (4 is the only version they offer) and extracted the files onto a floppy disc by the instruction guidlines included.

At the warning window, I tried Yes and then F2 to specify a floppy diskette. My floppy drive checked the diskette for a second and the computer told me to insert the floppy. This repeated several times and I realized that Linux will never recognize what's inside the diskette.

There's also instruction in the driver guidlines describing how to initialize the process by using Shell Prompt after the warning window appears(hitting Ctrl+Alt+F2). But what it says doesn't seem to work on my computer.

So now I'm lost. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I'm providing some information regarding the driver files I got from the site:

There're two types of driver files, one for 32-bit CPU and the other for 64-bit CPU. Each have four editions(one base program, three upgrades). My computer uses AMD Athlon 3200+ 64bit CPU.

The content of the base driver for the 64-bit CPU is listed below:

grub\ (Folder. )
i386-pc\ (Folder..)
e2fs_stage1_5 (11KB)
fat_stage1_5 (10KB)
ffs_stage1_5 (9KB)
reiserfs_stage1_5 (13KB)
stage1 (1KB)
stage2 (128KB)
grub (243KB)
grub-install (13KB)
grub-md5-crypt (3KB)
lilo\ (Floder. )
bin\ (Folder..)
rhpost-install.sh (5KB)
boot\ (Folder..)
boot.b (6KB)
message (23KB)
etc\ (Folder..)
lilo.conf (1KB)
sbin\ (Folder..)
lilo (60KB)
old\ (Folder. )
initial_install.sh (1KB)
initial_install_RH.sh (1KB)
modinfo (1KB)
modules.dep (1KB)
modules.inf (1KB)
pcitable (1KB)
rhdd-6.1 (1KB)
initial_install.sh (1KB)
load-driver-from-floppy.sh (1KB)
modules.cgz (89KB)
RedHat_3132_INSTALL.txt (5KB)
SiI.id.txt (1KB)
upgrade_driver.sh (11KB)

And the guidline file RedHat_3132_INSTALL.txt says:

Silicon Image Red Hat Series Driver Installation
(SATA 3132 Controller)


OVERVIEW

This driver disk adds support for the SiI 3132 SATA controller that is otherwise
not supported by the open source installation program.

Supported versions:

* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0, Kernel revision 2.6.9-5.
* This driver rev. 1.0.5.8 supports 64-bit AMD/Intel platforms for Sii3132 controller with base (non-RAID)
port multiplier and hot-plug capabilities.

CREATE FLOPPY before INSTALLATION

A floppy disk is required to install into a brand new (or blank) disk drive.

1. Several Options:

. If you received a zip file, Use Winzip to unzip the [distribution]filename.zip file on to a formatted floppy disk.
. If you received a tgz file, extract the contents of the [distribution]_sii____rhdd.tgz file on to a
formatted floppy disk. (e.g. use tar xzf [distribution]_sii____rdhh.tgz)

. If you received a img file, and you are running windows: use "rawrite.exe sii____.img A:"
(you can get rawrite from RedHat installation disk #1 \dosutils directory)
If you are running linux: use "dd if=filename.img of=/dev/fd0"


Note: IMPORTANT NOTE FOR OEM CUSTOMERS
ADD your PCI ID to the "pcitable" file if OEM VendorId is going to be different
from SiI 0x1095 IDs. (End Users should ignore this step)


2. The following BIOS BOOT sequence is recommended => CD, Hard Disk,
Floppy


INSTALL THE Linux DRIVER

Before you start make sure the BIOS sees your adapter card (if applicable) and
your disk drives.

Installing the Linux SiI Driver currently requires some manual intervention.

If just adding Data Drives or upgrading go to sections 2.1 or 2.2
(non-bootable SATA drives are considered Data Drives)

Boot from the Linux CD 1 or a boot diskette that you have created.

When you get to the screen shown in figure 1. get a shell prompt (see last page) and execute the initial_install script
as follows:


# mkdir /f
# mount /dev/fd0 /f
# cd /f
# ./initial_install.sh



figure 1:

| Warning |

No hard drives have been found.
You probably need to manually
choose device drivers for the
for the installation to succeed. Would
you like to select drivers now?

| Yes | | No |




Once the driver is installed select 'No' and then 'Done' on the next screen.
Continue with the installation. Last, BEFORE REBOOTING run the script below.

# ./upgrade_driver.sh


This last step writes all the drivers permanently into the kernel.

Installation at this point is completed.


2.1 Adding a DATA DRIVE

If your system is already up and running then you can use execute shell scripts to modify
the kernel or add loadable modules to access the SATA drives as follows:


. # mount /mnt/floppy
in case of DOS formatted floppy
. # mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

. # 'sh /mnt/floppy/load-driver-from-floppy.sh' (DATA DRIVES)
(or use the the proper script depending on your kernel)

. if you want to make sure you can see the drives, you may want
to 'mke2fs /dev/sda' and 'mount /dev/sda /test' the hard disk(s).
(Depending on your system configuration, the SATA drives could be /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc, /dev/sdd.....)

. insmod sii3132. As an example add the following lines at the end
of the script in /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit

'insmod scsi_mod'
'insmod sii3132'

. At this point you are done with the installation

2.2 Upgrading the Kernel

If your system is already up and running then you can use execute shell scripts to modify
the kernel or add loadable modules to access the SATA drives.


3. GENERAL INFO

. If you cat /proc/scsi/sii3132/* you should see the Driver as reported by
the kernel.

. If you cat /proc/scsi/scsi you should see the your DRIVE TYPE as reported
by the kernel.

4. New Features and bug fixes

a. The driver could support SATA ATAPI devices.
b. This revision of driver has GUI interface that can configure RAID set.


5. Known Restriction

None.



Console Keystrokes Contents

1 [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[F1] installation dialog
2 [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[F2] shell prompt
3 [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[F3] install log (messages from installation program)
4 [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[F4] system-related messages
5 [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[F5] other messages
7 [Ctrl]-[Alt]-[F7] X graphical display

RH9 is REALLY old. Can you try a newer distro that might support RAID and your hardware better?

Thanks. I'm done with RedHat, and now I've got Fedora 7 working perfect on my computer.

Alex

Just to be clear, you do know that Fedora is essentially ReHat's testbed?

Thank you for reminding. Yes, I read about the RH story. Red Hat is now commercial, and based on it, the Fedora project keeps moving forward free of charge. Actually I could still be using RH9 if I didn't have this SATA problem. Coz I'm not completely switching to Linux, but just trying to compile an embeded Linux project for my ARM9 digital system. What I need is nothing but an ordinary Linux kernel and a GCC environment.

Alex

I run F7 on my desktop but my servers are all Centos5. Centos5 is RedHatEL5 with the logos removed. The problem with Fedora on servers is that its support cycle is down to about one year. I will not run an unsupported versions due to security issues but I am not willing to re-setup a server every year(no need other than security). With Centos' five year support cycle and with Centos5 "feeling" just like FC6 I felt it was the best choice.

Good Luck
Lazlow