Hello,

I'm trying to install Linux on a system with an Abit KR7A-RAID board, 512 Mb of RAM, 2 x 80 Gb IBM Deskstar drives (used for Windows) and 2 x 123 Gb IBM Deskstar drives which I want to use as a RAID-1 array for Linux.

So far I've tried installing Suse 8.1 and after spending close to three months working out why it wouldn't see my disks correctly (thankyou Suse for your complete lack of help) I located some new drivers on the Highpoint site which finally enabled YAST2 to see my RAID array correctly.

I then ran the YAST2 install, supplied the new drivers from floppy, and all seemed to work fine until the installation finished and I rebooted.... at which point I got a "Kernel Panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 08:13" message.

So after much web surfing I decided I'd had enough of Suse 8.1 and that I'd be better off using the latest Slackware distribution as I believe that this will be the best way for me to really learn Linux.

I therefore deleted my RAID array and all partitions on both 123 Gb disks before creating 6 new partitions on the first 123 GB drive (for boot, swap, /tmp, /, /usr and /home) Once this was complete I then created & synchronised a new RAID-1 array in the BIOS.

Next step was to boot from a slackware 9.0 CD, select the "ataraid.i" kernel, log into root and run "setup".

At this point I follow the on screen prompts to select my keyboard, select filesystems/mount points for my partitions, select package source, packages etc. etc. and try to install.

About 5 seconds later I get a message telling me everything's been installed and "I may now exit setup and reboot my computer". Now I know my setup runs reasonably fast but it's certainly not that fast !

Obviously not a single byte has been transferred to any part of any disk and I'm now sitting here wondering what on earths going on ? There are no error messages displayed and there's nothing obviously wrong ? but equally nothing's been installed...

I would therefore be most grateful if anyone can give me any advice whatsoever on how to proceed ??? So far I've spent nearly 4 months trying to get Linux on this box and to say I'm getting a little frustrated is an understatement.

My only crumb of comfort is that I've learnt quite a bit about about partitioning, mount points and filesystems etc. etc. but this is no substitute for logging in to a working box

Thankyou

.....

Same thing, but it only skipped GNOME, KDE, X, and XAP.

Solution: Clean or Reburn the cd. Download a fresh ISO if you want to be sure.

Cut download times short with ...

http://flashget.com

Firstly thanks for the reply but I've been out drinking since my initial post and I have to say......

Hmmm.

Call me old fashioned but when I compare a files expected MD5 checksum against an ISO image and this gives me the "thumbs up" I expect this to mean that the ISO image I've downloaded is o.k. ? (i.e. this is what I did with the slackware ISO image I downloaded)

A gallon of Becks later though and I think that maybe I should forget protocol and should start trying to install Linux using a thermonuclear device, a hammer and some stout hobnailed boots ?

Please help me replace Windoze on my (seemingly) lovely box !

Praise "Bob" !

Just burn it again, then.

I had similar problems with my motherboad which also has a Highpoint 372 controller. I have a Soyo SY-KT400 Dragon Ultra Platinum Plus with an AMD Athlon 2600+ processor. Mine has two seperate hard drive controllers built in. Only the Highpoint 372 has RAID capability. The non-Highpoint controller controls 2 80 GB IDE drives on hda and hdb. The Highpont 372 controls the 120GB IDE disk on hdg. I am not using the RAID option. My CD-RW is on hdc.

I tried to install several different Linux distros and had problems with each. In each case I was attemting to install onto partitions on one of the first two hard drives. With the various distros the installation program would lock up unless I first disabled the Highpoint 372 controller. If I later re-enabled the Highpoint I would get a kernel panic error or other problem when when booting up Linux. I had unsuccessfully tried to install Red Hat 8.0, Mandrake 9.0, and Suse 8.1. I also tried Slackware 8.1 and did get it to install while the Highpoint was disabled. It actually booted up after re-enabling the Highpoint but I was unable to mount partitions from hdg.

I purchased this because the Soyo web page said it was compatible with Linux. I discussed this problem recently on a Soyo users board with several others who were also unable to install any distro on this motherboad. No one had succeded in installing any Linux distro. I finally tried the new Red Hat 9.0 and it runs perfectly and totally solves the problem! I boot it from hdb1 but am also able to mount partitions from hdg which is controlled by the Highpoint. I also plan to try the new Slackware 9.0 and see if it will work. Of course I am happily running Red Hat 9.0 as I write this.

With the Slackware 8.1 I tried to install it several times. When the Highpoint was enabled I did once have a stuation like Raptor Ramjet describes where after only a few seconds I got a message telling me everything's been installed, but of course it hadn't. I am no expert and these are different motherboards but, both seem to have problems with support for the Highpoint 372. Am I correct in saying that your Abit motherboard also has a Highpoint 372 IDE controller?

I would Iike add one other thought. On another web page I looked at a photo of your Abit motherboard. In the photo it looks to me like there might be 4 IDE connectors just like on mine. On my Soyo I can connect a master and slave pair of devices on each cable going into the 4 connectors. That gives me a total of 8 IDE devices. Does it work the same for your Abit motherboard? Do you have just one IDE controller or two?

On my Soyo, running both controllers at once seemed to have confused Linux. When I did get one copy of Red Hat 8.0 running with the Highpoint enabled, it seemed to be partially looking at backup copies of partions on hdg instead of the partions on hdb where everything had been installed. By the way, hdg is the master on IDE cable 4.

Firstly thanks again for the replies. And Solean, I appreciate your efforts but there's no problem with the CD - honest ! Its MD5 checksum is correct and the disc surface is clean enough for Howard Hughes to eat his breakfast on. Having had problems with it on other distros I'm convinced the problem lies with my motherboards HPT372 controller...

So as you've guessed this confirms that my motherboard has the highpoint HPT372 controller. Following Linux device naming conventions I'm trying to install to /dev/hdg (Primary controller on EIDE4 which is the second of the RAIDable EIDE connectors on the board)

On this note then I tried another install this morning and, despite a raging hangover, I noticed that the slackware install sees the disks as seperate devices (hdg and hdh) rather than just hdg (I missed this yesterday)

So for my next step I guess the next thing to do is to try loading a highpoint module before starting the setup program. I had to do this with the Suse install (which then saw the disk correctly) I'll try all the various modules that I got from the highpoint site and if I can get anything to work I'll "write it up".

Alternatively I could try Red Hat 9.0 but I've kind of set my heart on using slackware as I like it's ""nakedness" and I do think that it'll be more problems for me in the beginning but that this will help me learn linux.

Not only that but the propoganda page has a picture of a Subgenius Tux and, being a Subgenius minister myself, this proves "Bob" has guided me to this ditro (hence all my problems .... thankyou "Bob")

Hmmmmm....

Following on from my last post I've tried to use the Highpoint drivers that I used for my Suse 8.1 install by issuing the following commands

login: ataraid.i hde=noprobe hdf=noprobe hdg=noprobe hdh=noprobe

root@slackware: mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
root@slackware: cp /mnt/hpt37x2.o /mnt
root@slackware: insmod /tmp/hpt37x2.o

But this tells me that:

/tmp/hpt37x2.o was compiled for kernel version 2.4.19-4GB
while this kernel is version 2.4.20

So my next question is does anybody have a version of the highpoint 372 controller driver which has been compiled against the 2.4.20 kernel ? If so I'd be most grateful for a copy !!!

As I'm now in the catch 22 situation whereby I've downloaded a copy of the the source from the highpoint site

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/372drivers_down.htm

But I now can't compile the drivers without a linux system... and I can't install a linux system without the drivers

Which hard drives does your BIOS consider to be the first two hard drives. The reason that I ask is that in the Red Hat 9 Installation Guide it says "if you have 2 IDE (or EIDE) drives, /boot must be located on one of them. Note that this two-drive limit also includes any IDE CD-ROM devices on your primary IDE contoller. So, if you have one IDE hard drive, and one IDE CD-ROM on your primary controller, /boot must be located on the first hard drive only, even if you have other hard drives on your secondary IDE controller.

That comes from the Red Hat Installation Guide. I assume that would also apply to Slackware. So, as long as /boot in on the appropriate drive the other partitions could be on any drive. Of course boot probably also needs to be on a primary partition not an extended partition.

On my Soyo motherboard the Highpoint 372 has a seperate BIOS that loads just after the main BIOS finishes loading. To get into the Highpoint BIOS on my computer I press CONT-H at the appropriate moment during bootup. To get into the main BIOS I press DEL at the appropriate time. Each BIOS provides options related to boot order and RAID. So on my computer at least, it looks like it may be possible to choose which is the 1st hard drive.

I have been using Linux for only a little over a year and do not yet know how to compile a kernal or know much about drivers. This summer I hope to learn to do that and perhaps even try installing the Linux from scratch distro so I can learn more about the different Linux components. I still have lots of unused hard disk space an even an extra primary partition to play with. Good Luck!

On your Abit motherboard you mentioned that one of the hard disks is hdg and the other is hdh. That numbering suggests to me that you have both hard drives on EIDE cable 4 and that one is the master and the other is the slave. Is that correct? Here is what it says in the Soyo motherboard user manual under the Highpoint 372 section: "When setting up the RAID 0 or RAID 1, please use the IDE 3 master and IDE 4 master. We do not recommend configuring the RAID array on the same IDE."

I realize you have an Abit motherboard not a Soyo but, I am wondering if you have your RAID 1 array all on one cable. I have never tried to create a RAID array so I do not know much more than that about creating one. But, in the manual it also says: "you can create a disk array using the HPT372 BIOS Utility Configuration. It then goes on to say that you "need to use this utility if you plan to install an operating system on IDE3/4." Since you also have a Highpoint 372 I assume you would probably also do it the same way. Is that more or less what you have done so far?

Hello,

I have indeed got the disks on EIDE controller 4 as master & slave and I wish I'd have thought about this sooner as this is dumb !

The only reason I did this in the first place was that, when I bought the drive, I didn't have a spare cable to put the second disk on it's own controller so I "temporarily" connected it as a slave.

As I've been using the disks under Windoze for about 4 months I simply forgot this so, as I've now got a spare cable, I'll put the disks on their own controllers and try again.

Thankyou for pointing out my idiocy !

Just to say I've moved this thread over to a new thread with a better definition of the problem e.g. "Does ANY Linux distro support HPT372 controller on Abit KR7A-RAID ???"

So thanks for all the replies but any further discussion should be in the other thread.

Thankyou