Hello everyone im having this peculiar issue with installing suse 10.2 x86_64. Im able to boot the dvd and start the install process, but whats wierd is that when i go to set up a custom partition It shows i have 3 hard drives ( or locations) i can install to.

1.isw(then some gibberish)biosraid
2./dev/sda
3./dev/sdb

Option 1 has never shown in all my other linux distros ive installed. I have made sure multiple times in my Intel D975xbx bios to have the raid turned off and it still shows, i also tried to mess around with bios options like making it run in legacy mode instead of enhanced for the hard drives... and also disconected sdb just to experiment but it still shows. Ive also tried to boot with "linux nodmraid" and still no luck...

ive booted into Gparted also and it dosent show this crazy device/biosraid/partition or what ever...

It's causing me alot of head ache cause i want to Use suse so bad... Because of this problem im not able to install it keeps giving me an error when it tries to install to the mount points im specifying, which is correct and works for every other distro i try.

Please any suggestions would be greatful.

Thanks
Amphaeon

P.S.
If there is more info i can fetch for anyone please let me know, im willing to work on this till it works

Just install to sda/sdb and ignore the software RAID.

it wont work, keeps giving me errors.... if it was that easy i wouldn't have even bothered posting here...

Can you break the RAID in the BIOS?

Joe

What errors does it give you?

Not sure what ur saying by break the RAID, but it is turned off. As far as the error, let me get that ill add it as an edit in a bit...

If u want a short answer here it is for the error: "System Error Code was: -3008"

For a little more indepth here is exactly what i just did and i even tried some other things...

1. Booted up Suse 10.2 64bit dvd. CRC checked fine...
2. Chose default install.
3. Language > English
4. Agrement >agree
5. Probes for hardware then i tell New Install
6. Creates Source, Parsing Files, Time Zone.
7. Picked KDE (since this is what suse has used for a long time as default)
8.Partitioning, I choose custom, then expert So i can setup everything normally.
Now for info this is what it suggested: "Extended Raid isw_babfeeadbi_System_Part4 117.7 Gb ( i think it was /var, didnt seem to write and im to lazy to go through again)
Extended Raid isw_babfeeadbi_System_Part5 70.5 Mb /boot
Extended Raid isw_babfeeadbi_System_Part6 20Gb /
Extended Raid isw_babfeeadbi_System_Part7 91.7Gb /home
Set Mount Points: dev/sda1 to /windows/D
dev/sdb1 to /windows/E
/dev/mapper/isw_babfeeadbi_System_Part(forgot number didnt write) to /windows/C"
So that was what it wanted, i told it i wanted this:
"/dev/sda3 to / (root) 50Gb
/dev/sdb2 to swap (which is same for all my other linux installs)
When i tell it to do this it fails with error -3008

I wanted to get more info to show whats wierd so i went to tty2 and cd /sbin. After i cd there i run fdisk -l and it shows the wierd dm raid partitions and it says something about the partitioning table dosent look right for this....(duh!)
I tried to rune fdisk -l > suseerrors.elog and mount /dev/sda2 to a dir i made really quick (blah) by running mount -t xfs /dev/sda2 /blah and it says its busy or blah is busy.... so then i run umount on dev/sda2 to make sure its not mounted... and it isnt...

So there it is... hope this helps diagnose the problem, and btw if any of this was unclear please quote it and ill clarify as best that i can...

Thanks everyone for trying to assist.

anyone have any suggestions? Please i still need help...

I have just installed OpenSuSE 10.3 on a RAID0 array and installation was a breeze. The only problem of allowing the installer to install RAID automatically is that now I have a 2GB swap partition with 3GB RAM

Looking at the Ubuntuforums and soft RAID, they want me to install Ubuntu from the 'alternative' disk which doesn't have GUI support. OpenSuSE is light years ahead.

OTOH, Ubuntu and SuSE distributions are targeting different people/markets, with the former targetting Office/Home PC's whereas the latter the enthusiasts. Not many office PC's have RAID0

I had the same problem with hardware raid. Just could not get it to install. What I had to do was delete the raid and a "create a custom partition" during the installation in the expert installation mode. I think there is some geometry confusion when trying to install to a hardware raid, at least there was with mine.

If you only have two hard drives, I would suggest using the LVM method for combining the disks, it's easier. If you want to do anything else with them you'll obviously have to use the RAID options.

I have exactly the same problem with SuSE 11 (it happened with SuSE 10.3 also). There is no way to turn off "dmraid" during install. I have four HD's on my machine: 2 are in RAID0 and the other 2 are not. I would like to install in one of those HD that is not in raid mode. The problem is that, even turning off the BIOS raid, also 3 HD's in BIOS, I still get the /dev/mapper/... pointing to a isw_... something, and there is no way to turn the damn dmraid out. Why novell does not implement a "nodmraid" kernel load option as Fedora does?