Need info on new install with hardware RAID1
 

Hello -
I'm running in circles, and hope someone can point me to a HOWTO
for a new Slackware install using a hardware RAID1 system.
The BIOS reports the RAID as healthy.

Being naive, I thought the hardware would simply be transparent to
the install -- my two raid disks would look like one during the
install session. Not so.

After going through the setup, the system hangs at
L 99 99 99 99 99 ....

However,I can boot up on a floppy, and when I check
/etc/lilo.conf, it looks like this:

#Start LILO global section
boot = /dev/sda
message - /boot/boot_message.txt
prompt
timeout = 120
lba32
change-rules
reset
vga = 771
#
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda1
label Linux
read-only

---------------------

cfdisk reports this:

cfdisk 2.12r
diskdrive: /dev/sda
Size: 250059350016 bytes, 250.0 GB
Heads: 255 Sectors per track: 63 Cylinders: 30401

Name Flags Part type FS type [Label] Size (MB)
sda1 Primary Linux ext2 50009.71
sda2 Primary Linux ext2 195111.87
sda3 Primary Linux swap 4935.17


I've spent several days googling this problem but so far all
of the information seems to pertain to software raid systems.
If anyone can point me to an inforation source, it might help
me from saying to hell with it and just going with a non-raid system.

i think you should start by fdisk'ing your drives to linux RAID. (the code is 0xFD, but do check that in this guide http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html#toc10)

however i think thats only if you want the raid to be identified at boot time.

of course if you have the OS file on that RAID1 you definitely need this:)

so start from there...

L 99 99 99 99 99 ....

this means it cant read lilo. it found it but cant read it. That howto is for software raid you don't need/want that if you are going to use hardware raid.

boot = /dev/sda
root = /dev/sda1

This is the problem you can't use /dev/sda in hardware raid it will be something like /dev/<carddriver>/<raidpartition>. /dev/sda doesnt exist on your system, and if it does and you use it, it will just mess things up.