So here's the deal:

I've been trying to install various flavors of linux on my SATA Raid array:

I've tried Gentoo, Mandriva 2006 and Fedora. These three don't work on my hardware.

Mandriva goes into the following kernel panic right after install: "not synching: no init found. Try passing init= option into kernel".

Gentoo stops as it's loading the HID at startup.

Finally, The Fedora install media is just straight screwed up.

Stats are below. Keep in mind that all the harddrives are identical (if that makes a difference).

Your SATA array is probably actually a bios software array. I had to break my array, use the 2.4.29 kernel in mepis to get started, and compile the newest kernel to get my system and most major components up and running. If you can spare starting over with Windows (if you're dual booting) then I suggest you try breaking the array, and seeing if anything will go with the drives setup as stand alones.

delete this post

trying SUSE 10 now. is there really any difference in this distro in comparing with other distros that a like me should watch out for?

Hi,

SuSe 10 will probably find all your hardware. You using the eval version?
I have been running SuSe 10 and previous versions for quite some time, and it learned me alot.

So...You picked the right distro if you are completely new to linux...though you must know your way around the terms when you installed gentoo...

as far as Gentoo was concerned - it's not so much a matter of running it as much as even installing it. It wouldn't even install.
I'm attempting to use open Suse.

okay, just got it installed, went to restart it and locks up on the initial loading of GRUB

/boot is set to a RAID1 partition, the rest is set to RAID0

*update* when I went to repair the thing, no usable linux distrobution was found.... RAID seems useless

Have you found this thread yet? Did you get the ASUS drivers working? In theory, since /boot is a RAID-1you could just point GRUB to either of the component hard drives and it should work. If you could post your grub.conf it would help us see what the problem might be.

I didn't even know I needed Mainboard drivers for the OS. I thought that was all taken care of through the Distro. hmm, interesting.

so I've unfortunately found out that OSS is having a problem with GRUB. And by "having a problem", I mean it's not installing it. The initial install gives me the undescript "Grub Hard Disk error", later finding out that it doesn't even install GRUB (according to the suse repair option on the install cd).

Could part of the problem be that my I'm using the net install of OSS as opposed to the cd/dvd install?