Hi all,
I'm a newb to Linux, so please bear with me if this has been asked before.

I am running an Athlon XP 2400, on an ASRock K7VT4A+ M/B. I have upgraded this to SATA using an Ali SATA Raid card.

The Kubuntu Live CD (Hardy Heron) will not boot while the SATA drive (my Win XP boot drive) is connected. If I remove it, (but not the card) and connect my old IDE drive, Kubuntu does boot. Is there any way to get Kubuntu to boot while the SATA drive is connected ?

When I try to boot from the Live CD, it gets as far as "BusyBox blah blah (initramfs)" then stops. The machine does not "hang", and I can type in "help", to get the list of commands, but no further progress is possible.

If I use the option to install Kubuntu alongside Windows, it only takes a few seconds to "install". This does not seem long enough for much of anything to install properly, and all I have on my boot partition is one folder (ubuntu)
If I then reboot, I get the option to boot into either OS, but the Kubuntu startup only gets as far as the Live CD does.

The main problem is that I don't know what's supposed to happen. Does Kubuntu automatically recognize the SATA card ? Is it supposed to install something to allow it to recognize the card ?

Under Windows, I have to install "Third Party SCSI drivers" early in the Windows installation process, so that the SATA card can be used. How does Kubuntu handle this ?

Sorry for being such a dummy, but until I can get to know it better, this "Heron" will remain a "Turkey".

A few questions for you:
1) How did you burn the liveCD?
2) Do you still have the Kubuntu iso image?
3) Did you compare the md5sum for the iso you downloaded to the md5sum at the site you downloaded it from?
4) Were the md5sums the same?

If the md5sums are not the same, your download is corrupt and you need to download it again.

If your BIOS is set to poll the cd drive before the hard drive, your RAID card should not be a factor. The liveCD should boot. Since it isn't booting, I would suspect the livdCD as the problem. Which brings be back to 3) and 4) above.

Can you boot up Kubuntu in minimum (recovery) mode which should get you a basic command line login without all the various drivers. If so, then try to mount the SATA drive and see if this works normally. I have noticed some problems with mounting NTFS and FAT drives in which there is a corrupted directory (not necessarily picked up by Windows). Linux doesn't detect the corruption and attempts to read the directory. Depending on the corruption, it can take forever or never to complete the operation. This is a long shot but may be a start.

Ken

@ bigrigdriver: There is no problem with the CD. As I mentioned in my first post, it boots fine with SATA drive disconnected.

@Kenarkies: There is no minimum or recovery mode option on the boot menu. I have explored the options that there are, but these are all too geeky for a newb like me to understand, and might as well be in Swahili. There is no plain English explanation of any of the commands, and as the syntax is strange to me, they are no use either.

I can find no corrupted directories on the drive, despite repeated checks using a number of tools. However, it does sound as though *something* is trying to access the drive.

I think I'll quit on this. Until Linux sorts out issues like this, it's no use to me.

I have only SATA drives and have absolutely no problems. I wouldn't give up just yet. But do what you like. I would check BIOS settings to make sure nothing is odd there. Perhaps try a different distro. Linux is unlikely to be the problem, I think it may be incompatible hardware or an odd setup that is causing the problem.

I am running into this issue also using on DELL Optiplex 745 boxes w/SATA HD and SATA CD-ROM. Some distros will install fine and others wont.

It's NOT the CD.

Ubuntu, SuSe install - Older Red Hat, CentOS, Debian will not.

I have set the BIOS to "Legacy" with no help!

I don't know if this is a kernel version issue or something else. I am looking for a definitive answer and/or a work-around HowTo for this problem.

Thanks!

I would guess your issue is due to the chipet on your SATA controller, since it only happens when you ahve a device connected to the controller.

My workaround would be to buy a known Supported SATA controller..

Does your Sata card have one of these chips on it ?

#(link) ULi Electronics, Inc. (formerly ALi) M1573 South Bridge and M5285, M5283, and M5281 SATA-I bridge chips — fakeraid. libata driver "sata_uli". Driver is now production quality.

#(link) ULi Electronics, Inc. (formerly ALi) AHCI-compatible chips — fakeraid. ULi's M1575 4-port SATA-II PCI Express South Bridge is its first chipset to support the standard AHCI driver interface.

#(link) ULi Electronics, Inc. (formerly ALi) M1567 SATA-II PCI Express South Bridge — fakeraid. Probably supports the standard AHCI driver interface (unconfirmed).




http://linux-ata.org/driver-status.html#uli

Nice answer!
Thanks farslayer.

@ farslayer:
Good answer, with one tiny problem. You see, the price of a card that supports true hardware RAID is more than my modest computer is worth.
Even the cheapest Adaptec card is 62 G.B.P. (around 120 Dollars) so you can imagine my reluctance to buy one, simply to try Linux, when I have an otherwise fully functional system.

I will be building another computer *soon*, so once it's up and running, I will try Linux on it, and see what happens.

I really want Linux to work for me, as I see it as my next OS, when it's time to move on from XP.

Don't buy a raid controller then.. buy a Standard SATA controller that is well supported, and setup software RAID. it will actually perform better than those fakeraid cards do.

if you are trying to run a fakeraid card on a dual boot system and have the raid actually working for Windows and Linux... well I doubt that is going to happen. on a hardware based RAID controller sure it would work.

You need to pick your battles, and when it comes to compatibility you have a couple choices. On a budget do software RAID if that is your goal.

The problem seems to be with Kubuntu, rather than the card, as Ophcrack (a live linux CD for cracking lost Windows passwords) boots and recognizes my HD with no problem.

OK, it seems that distro maintainers are selective about what drivers they include, and Kubuntu Live CD seems to have omitted the driver (which presumably exists) for the Ali card. If you are using the live CD rather than the live DVD then the more limited space on the CD may be a reason for the omission. I have found the latest Knoppix DVDs to be able to handle anything except very early hardware (for which drivers have been pensioned off).

Good luck, Ken