P4C800-E Deluxe, SATA+RAID1, SuSE Standard Server
 

I tried searching these forums but no luck...

Have anyone been able to install 2 SATA disks as RAID1 on P4C800-E Deluxe using Promise's integrated RAID and SuSE? Some other distro? How?

Here's what I've been able to do so far using SuSE Linux Standard Server 8 (SLSS, booting 2.4.19-4GB kernel, 4 CDs supplied: Standard Server CD and United Linux CDs 1-3):

- Promise integrated RAID is set as mirroring, Hyper Threading is enabled
- I'm using Promise binary driver version 1.0.00.18 (downloaded from Promise)
- I'm booting from United Linux CD-1 (should be same kernel as in SLSS boot CD but strangely it seems that only United Linux boot CD works with Promise driver) then after boot switching back to SLSS CD
- yast fails as no disks are found
- next I'm loading promise driver from floppy and return to install -> disks are found
- install -> everything seems to install ok

Now, after succesfull (it seems?) install I'm told to reboot. Computer starts booting, kernel image is found, but again no disks are found. How can it find kernel image on disk but still not find the disks (I don't know how these MBRs etc. work :)? Isn't the supplied promise driver copied to the disk during installation? How can I get that module on the disk and loaded before disks are being identified.

As you see, I'm no professional tweaking the boot process... I'm out of ideas and getting desperate here :)

Mayby I should just give it up and buy IDE disk until better SATA+RAID support becomes available to Linux? Ideas?

TIA

ave anyone been able to install 2 SATA disks as RAID1 on P4C800-E Deluxe using Promise's integrated RAID and SuSE?

No because linux doesnt support SATA until kernel 2.6 is included in the distros.
You could have found this out by searching for help on SATA. You'll need the IDE or a PATA drive to install to first. THen to can upgrade to a SATA kernel.

you cant use RAID1 with 2 SATA drives RAID1 is 3 or more drives. RAID 0 is 2 drives.
and as far as i know, it cant be done at this time. even the newest kernel install dont see raid0 unless there is some magical mystical line you have to add to some mysterious config file, which would be quite typical of linux.
again im a noob too so i could be wrong

I thought that Promise controller + binary driver was hiding SATA details from the operating system (appearing to be low-level SCSI driver). Because I do get access to my SATA+RAID disks if I manually "insmod ft3xx.o". That is using 2.4.19-64GB-SMP kernel. It seems now the only problem is to find correct /etc/sysconfig/kernel and /etc/modules.conf configuration for initrd. After initial install (w/promise binary driver manually loaded) on disks I can get my SATA+RAID up again on reboot by doing:

- rescue boot from installation CD
- insmod ft3xx.o from floppy (promise driver)
- mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

At this point disks are up, system is working in /mnt directory.

Next I'm doing something like:

$ cd mnt
$ chroot .
- tweak /etc/sysconfig/kernel and /etc/modules.conf
$ mk_initrd

That is still failing as I'm probably missing some modules or loading things in wrong order (INITRD_MODULES="ft3xx etc.")... But the point is that I am able to access disks and files doing manual boot via rescue boot - but not being able to automate this using initrd so far.

How is this done (rough scenario)? If I put in IDE disk for temporary installation only, how do I move the system from IDE disk to SATA disk (after upgrading kernel)? Is it simply a matter of copying all files from disk to disk, setting up GRUB again and removing the IDE disk?