Installing Mandrake or RH on an already RAIDed system

joonix214 · 09-02-2003, 10:29 PM

Hello,

I am having trouble installing Mandrake or RedHat linux on my machine which already has RAID 0 set up with partitions already created.
System Spec:
Chaintech 7NJS w/ Promise FastTrack 376 SATA RAID controller
Two WD Raptor SATA HD

This is in RedHat:
I am a newbie and I have been trying to look up information on how to go about this installation process and so far I have gotten to the point where during the install when it says "boot:" I type expert and manually choose the Promise FastTrack RAID drivers. Then I get to the point where the install asks me if I want to use Disk Druid or just do things automatically and after that it gives me an error stating that it could not recognize the HD and exits the install process.

I have no clue as to where to go from here. Any help or suggestions would be of great help. Thank you.

-joonix

Electro · 09-03-2003, 02:56 AM

When the installer asks you do you have a SCSI controller. Say yes and tell it where to find the modules (drivers). Additional IDE controllers are considered as SCSI to an OS for some strange reason.

IMO, RAID 0 or RAID 5 should be used when you need high trhoughput speeds. You don't need high throughput for OS. RAID 0 or RAID 5 should be seperatly setup for web, database, file servers, video, or sound that needs high throughput speeds. An OS needs the lowest access latency times. SCSI hard drives or solid state hard drives will give you that. RAID 0 and RAID 5 only gives you throughput.

You are better off using a single hard drive for the OS. Also you can use some space on the RAID for a swap partition.

BTW, the drivers (modules) have to be the same version as the Promise controller BIOS version.

joonix214 · 09-04-2003, 07:22 PM

Thank you for the advice.

You make a very valid point. I don't know if I'll be able to move to a non raided system right now but I'll definitely consider that when shopping for my next upgrade.

I was wandering though, the mandrake install process asks for the driver but I can't seem to find a working driver for the RAID controller. Does anyone have any idea where i can access the driver for a Promise FastTrack376 RAID for Mandrake linux. I found one for Red hat on the promise site but not for mandrake. Thank you.

-joonix