I must have read 150 howtos,faqs,docs and postings, but I really have made no progress. Please help me boot my system directly into RAID.

System is a Debian box, running kernel 2.6.4. I'm trying to convert the two IDE hard disks to run as a mirrored RAID1 array, attached to the onboard PROMISE fasttrak controller. Despite the PROMISE controller, this is effectively a Software RAID solution, as the kernel just sees two IDE devices. I want to mirror all the partitions, although I'd be happy to let /boot be separate if necessary.

On boot, I get the following error:

md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
...
...
VFS: Cannot open root device "905" or md5
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: unable to mount root fs on md5

So, no raid arrays are detected. The partitions have hex code 'fd' (linux raid autodetect).

Each partition boot,root,usr and var is mirrored exactly on the other disk. This is all fine, and under KNOPPIX, I can use mdadm to set up the arrays, mount them, and everything works as expected. My kernel has everything appropriate compiled in: md, raid1, ext2, ext3 and so on, and I boot it directly, not via initrd.

An excerpt from my lilo.conf is at the moment (although I've made many changes):
lba32
boot=/dev/md2
raid-extra-boot=/dev/hde,/dev/hdg
root=/dev/md5

lilo runs successfully, but evidently, the raid device isn't available at boot time on device major number 9. I didn't assign md0 or md1: is this the problem? I matched the mdx numbers to the original partition numbers.

Please can anyone point me in the right direction?

Many thanks,
Jack

Hi

As far as i´ve found out, you´ll just have to wait ´til Promise will release source code apropriate for the kernel 2.6.x series, last time i´ve mailed them, they told that source code will be released spring/summer this year.

Else you´ll have to stick to software raid, or as i´m doin´, i´m using Slackware 9.1 ( kernel 2.4.22), thus being able to use Promises source code and being able to use my HDD in hardware raid 0.

Sinc Palle Kuling

why can't they release their source code with the software?

geez, I really wonder what's going on in these people's mind. read the signature ;-)

IMHO since this is a bios assisted software solution anyway, why not just turn off the raid function all together and use it as a standard IDE and then use linux software raid. This is what I did with my 20276 OBC. Works quite well running linux software raid level 1. The only disadvantage you would have by doing this is that if you wanted to run a dual boot setup like say XP, Deb, you would have to have XP on a seperate hard disk. I guess maybe you could just make a smaller raid in linux and leave some space for an XP partition, but the bottom line is that you wouldn't be able to have your XP partition protected by the RAID-1. I don't run XP at all on my FC4 box, so it isn't an issue for me. I know this doesn't help with your question, but I was just trying to propose a quick and workable solution.

software RAID has always been an option of course.. I've never even tried to get it to work, since I heard so many bad things about it. maybe they were wrong?

I don't run XP (yuck) either on that machine, it's a server anyway so I really REALLY don't want that. the other machine that runs a trashed win 2k as well as a debian doesn't need RAID, just as good

thanks for the reply anyway. maybe the new kernel has better support for this hardware? when I first tried it was pretty new, and I never tried again since my last post. could be something to do whenever I have time to waste...

have a nice day