I'm trying to set up a server using Slackware 9.1 and I was wondering if anyone could help me with the initial install. This is my hardware:

Tyan Thunder K8W
Dual Opteron 240
HPT374 (Rocketraid) Controller (In Raid 1 Configuration)


The biggest problem I'm having is getting the installation to recognize the Raid 1 array I set up in the bios of the HPT374 PCI Controller Card. I can fdisk the first or the second hard drive but it won't let me fdisk the raid 1 array.

I have tried booting with ataraid.i and raid.s but when I look in either /dev/ataraid or /dev/rd, I don't see an array.

I have read that people have gotten the HPT372 to be recognized and they said that d0 would appear in /dev/ataraid but I don't have that on this controller.

Is it possible to do an initial install of Slackware with kernel 2.6.3? If so, would this fix my problem because I'm thinking that perhaps the default kernel (2.4.22) that comes with Slack 9.1 doesn't support the HPT374 controller?

Also, I need to make sure I have SMP enabled as well. Is this also possible on an initial first time install?

Any help would be much appreciated. :-)

Well I figured out how to create a Raid 1 array on an HPT374. It's simple: Don't use Highpoint Drivers and just create a software based raid setup which is all that card does under windows anyway.


Two helpful links for this:

http://www.megapico.co.uk/linuxdocs/slackware_raid.html

http://lug.boulder.co.us/docs/vi_vim_howto.html

I guess I'm going to have to recompile the kernel to do smp?