I have one VD hardware RAID 1, the install process goes smooth,
until it's time to put in LILO at which point it seems filesystem
goes Read Only on me, dmesg shows serious I/O errors, for either
ext4 (ext4_end_bio) and ext3 - I tried both types, but all of the
install from before that point seems to have made it to the drive.
I don't get it, it's like the RAID controller has dropped out ? I
could guess it's simply a case of the kernel not supporting this
'old' hardware anymore. The machine is brand new, got it 6 years
ago, big waste not to make use of it, lots of disk bays, lots of
memory. Anyone have experience dealing with this, please help.
booting huge.s, not sure what else is available, surely there is
another image for serverraid or other hardware, just not sure
where to find it (if one actually exists anymore).

I have used slackware for years

EDIT : After some discussion with a colleague this is our approach :

Install the OS to native media (small sata SSD ) and mount the raid
array for data. That is what I would do (agreed). May not have full
support for the raid controller until the full OS is loaded which
causes a problem for trying to boot from the raid controller. Kinda
a catch 22. Usual solution is to boot off of something else. Been
there, done that. May also need to install different driver to
properly handle the controller. Easier to do if the OS is
already running (also agreed).

Still open to ideas, so if anyone has any, I'm all ears.

Maiko

Problem solved.

1) connect a small SSD direct to a server motherboard SATA port,
install slackware 15 to it instead of to the ServeRaid drive.

2) use nomodeset as kernel parameter, of else you get a blank
console after booting slackware 15 from the SSD drive. The
video chips on these server are quite 'basic' I was told.

* took a while to notice keyboard and stuff was active, it
was simply the monitor with an orange light (no video)

3) go figure, the ServerRaid drive is sitting there waving at us :

root@physics2:~# fdisk --list
Disk /dev/sda: 135.97 GiB, 145999527936 bytes, 285155328 sectors
Disk model: ServeRAID M5015
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 060F4370-F713-7D4A-B640-F65B83D409D8

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 285155294 285153247 136G Linux filesystem

4) in the dmesg log :

megaraid cmm: 2.20.2.7 (Release Date: Sun Jul 16 00:01:03 EST 2006)
megaraid: 2.20.5.1 (Release Date: Thu Nov 16 15:32:35 EST 2006)
megasas: 07.717.02.00-rc1

scsi host0: Avago SAS based MegaRAID driver
scsi 0:2:0:0: Direct-Access IBM ServeRAID M5015 2.13 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5

So basically, just getting the OS to boot, and the rest is fine :}

Maiko