I have an lsi megaide 133-2 raid card with mirrored drives. I'd like to boot of these drives, but the megaide.o has to be included in initrd I believe.

Here is what I tried:
Add a temporary HD on /dev/hda - install debian - compile new kernel, boot new kernel and insert megaide module - debootstrap the new /dev/sd0 raid device - chroot to new install and run base-config/lilo/mkinitrd/etc - remove temp drive and try to boot /dev/sd0.

This failed, lilo spit out 01 01 01. I think it's related to the addressing/bios of the first bootable device.

Here is what I *should* be able to do:
Throw in a stock woody netinst image and a floppy with megaide.o on it and let the (smarter-than-me) installer build an initrd that works. Problem is that there is no stock megaide.o that works, and I can't find an exact image of the source used to compile installation kernels, so I can't build it (even if I could, they are ancient 2.2 crap and I don't think I can even compile that with newer gcc).

So I want to install woody on a system with a HD that I have to pre-compile the drivers for.

Any ideas?

Hi!

I had a problem like yours (with another brand pci ide-raid controller), you have details in this thread.

Fortunately we had the sources of the driver (ready to work with 2.6 kernels). I compiled it into the kernel (not like a module). And I left a small disk (800 mb) whith /boot partition (and kernel image) and another partition with a minimal debian distribution for rescue purposes. And all the rest of the stuff into the disk attached to the raid controller.

All working OK.

Well, if you have a megaide.o driver, you can copy the file to a floppy and, in the beginning of the debian installation, you can load this driver to have support of the drives attached to the raid controller. Debian insert this megaide.o driver into his default initrd, so you have support of your controller from then.

Hope to help you.