Installing slack 9.1 on integrated HPT374
 

Hi Guys,
I was wondering if someone could offer me a little assistance getting Slack 9.1 to recognize the raid 0 array I have connected to the integrated HPT374 controller of my ABIT IT7MAX2-V2, I have tried starting up using the ataraid.i option and during the loading of this I can see all the partions on my array flash by... at last I thought... woohoo this is going to be easier and I wont have to use redhat 9 anymore I thought, but when trying to use fdisk or cfdisk it tells me it cannot find any harddrive?
Has anyone else come across this or been able to install slack 9.1 using the supplied cds on a HPT374? if so could you advise me how thanks?

Dwayne

try insmod ataraid and insmod hptraid before fdisk or cfdisk on /dev/ataraid/d0

Thanks, will try this when I am home.

Cheers

How it worked for me (on HPT372)
 

Hello,

I recently installed Slackware 9.1 on a RAID array connected to an HPT372 controller (on an Abit KD7 motherboard). The way I did this was to specify the "ataraid.i" kernel image at the "boot:" prompt after which I used:

cfdisk /dev/ataraid/d0

to create the required partitions on my RAID-1 array (which is mirrored with both drives being connected as primary masters)

Once the partitions were created I was then able to specify them as mount points for "/", "/usr" and "/home" etc. using partition names of "/dev/ataraid/d0p1", "/dev/ataraid/d0p2" etc. etc.

The installation then went without a hitch and I was left with a shiny new Slackware installation (which I don't yet know how to configure or use but am learning more about every day !)

Hope this is of use !

Thanks, I managed to get this installed last night and must say it worked well, I've been using slack 9 on another pc without raid but have been dying to get it installed on my main machine with RAID for the speed :) I also want it to dual boot with XP, the install went fine.. all except for lilo and im left having to use the boot disk to start linux, I think i'll try the old method i read on a website a while ago to try and use the XP boot loader to start slack unless you would be able to give me any further advice?
The disks shows as /dev/ataraid/ and the partitions i have are

d0p1 - Windows XP
d0p2 - NTFS Partition (Extended)
d0p3 - /
d0p4 - SWAP

I chose to install lilo on the MBR and set this to /dev/ataraid/ at which point it just hung until I pressed return but after the install had completed the bootloader was not there... any tips on getting the final link in place?

Thanks Guys!

My MBR was written fine
 

Hello,

Well I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one dying to get Slackware installed on a RAID array !

As to writing to the MBR of the array I'm afraid all I can say is that it justs works for me. Having said that I've not got any FAT/NTFS partitions on the machine so I just have 4 linux partitions (for /, /usr, /home and /swap)

Don't know if you've already tried this but I edited my Lilo config file yesterday (to change the delay down to 10 seconds) and I then managed to rewrite the MBR with no problems using the command:

lilo -M /dev/ataraid/d0

Hope this is of help !

I'll be trying again a little latter on as I'm going to be repartitioning and reinstalling windows again too.... will bare that it mind, thanks.

Cheers

Doesnt work for me :(
It says its written to the MBR of /dev/ataraid/d0
But on reboot the machine just boots into Windows with no sign of lilo :(
I seem to have everything working as i want now... sound.. ati gfx... installed on raid and this is the last hurdle.. i'm having to ise a boot disk at the moment... any more ideas anyone?

Thanks in advance

Dwayne

Sadly the same command just worked on mine.
 

Unfortunately I'm afraid I can't offer any more ideas as exactly the same command just worked on my system.

However I don't have any Windoze partitions etc. on my box so I wonder if this could be the underlying cause of the problem ? I wonder if XP does something to the Master Boot Record so that Lilo can write to it but can't overwrite some "reserved" XP block or something ? (I have no XP eperience so I'm not sure if what I'm saying is a load of crap....) ;)

Sadly I therefore can't offer any more help as I've only just got a Linux system installed, know nearly nothing about it, and don't want to start giving out rubbish advice !

But if the worst comes to the worst at least you can still use a boot floppy until a solution is found.

Good luck !

Have managed to get this working now, I installed the bootloader in the root partition, copied this to a file and am using the windows bootloader to boot between XP and Slack... which is now running great :)

Cheers for all the suggestions

D

If it works use it
 

After an extensive search for raid hpt374 with slackware, the above guide from "Raptor Ramjet" did the trick without adding manually via command linewhat is already on the install cd's from Slackware.

I however needed a dual boot XP Pro and slackware system.
1. While in XP I used Partition magic to create a Swap and an Ext3 partition.
2. While installing Slackware 10 the partitions were already waiting with out the risk I might mess up the windows partitons under cfdisk. I also used the ataraid.i kernel .
3. Use a boot disk instead of writing to the MBR (good idea for noobs like me) . You may later after all is working edit or create a lilo recognizing the raid partitions.
4. Make sure if you use a boot disk as I did you specify the ataraid.i kernel on the bootdisk creation.
5. Get ready for a much faster system under Slack Raid

As a side not I have 2 machines side by side:

P4 1800Mhz IDE 7200rpm
AMD XP2200 (1800Mhz) raid 80gig 7200rpm

The Raid boot time for KDE is unbelievable