Hello
I'm planning switching to Linux from Windows and chose Mandriva 2007 Free to be my new OS.
I have an ASUS A8V Deluxe motherboard with VIA VT8237 which provides RAID funcionality on SATA drives.
During installation process the installer recognizes my RAID setup and asks me if I want to enable it. I answer yes and the partition is available to even install on it. I choose anohter partition on an ATA HDD.
Everything goes fine but my problem occurs after successful installation.
The partition is not mounted and cannot be mounted.
/etc/fstab refers to /dev/mapper/via_something (I'm away from that computer and cannot check). When I look into /dev/mapper there is only one file: control
When I use Knoppix the RAID is recognized and the partition is mounted normally.
Any hint about things to do would be much appreciated

Run the following and tell me what you get.

mdadm --examine --scan

When running
mdadm --examine --scan
I get nothing
[root@D ~]# mdadm --examine --scan
[root@D ~]#

I checked /etc/fstab and it has the following line referring to RAID:
/dev/mapper/via_dhgdggdbbd5 /mnt/win_c3 ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
but no /dev/mapper/via_dhgdggdbbd5 whatsoever

Then you are not running software RAID (mdadm). You are probably using logical volumes (lvm). /dev/mapper/via_dhgdggdbbd5 is the name of your volume group. It looks like your fstab has the name of the volume group but not the name of your logical volumes to mount. For example, this is how my fstab mounts my root partition which is the logical volume rootlv which is part of the volume group vg0:

/dev/mapper/vg0-roolv / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1

Also make sure that grub is booting to this root partition on startup.

Thanks for the reply ramram29.
I didn't use LVM when installing Mandriva. I have 2 ATA HDDs and 2 SATA HDDs working in RAID1.
I installed Mandriva on the first one and it is partitioned as below:

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 3824 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 3825 4865 8361832+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 3825 4780 7679038+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 4781 4865 682731 82 Linux swap / Solaris

The second one has only one logical NTFS partition:

Disk /dev/hdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 2 24321 195350400 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 2 24321 195350368+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Both of them are mounted fine during booting.

Now, when accessing the two SATA drives using fdisk I can see them:
The first one:
Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2 30401 244188000 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 2 30401 244187968+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

and the second:
Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2 30401 244188000 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 2 30401 244187968+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Here is my /etc/fstab to make things clearer:

/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults 1 1
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,users,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,r
o,exec 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso88
59-1,sync,codepage=850 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /mnt/win_c2 ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
/dev/mapper/via_dhgdggdbbd5 /mnt/win_c3 ntfs umask=0,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0

and ls -l on /dev/mapper:

total 0
crw-rw---- 1 root root 10, 62 Jan 26 00:06 control

Grub is not booting into the RAID partition and it shouldn't IMHO.

I discovered that all it takes is a simple dmraid -ay to be able activate the array and mount /dev/mapper/via_dhgdggdbbd5
It seems that dmraid is never activated when booting.
How can I activate it automatically every boot to be available before /etc/fstab is processed?

In the same situation, I'd like to know how to load it too at boot so I didn't have to manually do it everytime.

Cheers

It is enought to write to /etc/rc.local 'dmraid -ay' in a new line and mount the partitions afterwards, also in /etc/rc.local using mount:

dmraid -ay
mount /dev/mapper/via_dhgdggdbbd5 /mnt/F