Hi

Does anyone here have experience installing opensuse 10.3 on a ga-p35-dq6 mobo? I have 5 HDD of which 4 (7200rpm) in a raid-10 config (ICH9), containing 3 more or less equally sized partitions (c:\ with vista-x64 on it, d:\music and e:\user). The fifth hdd (PATA) contains two partitions (non-raid), also equally sized and is used for backup purposes mainly (5400rpm).
Yast-diskpart lists the HDD as following:

/dev/mapper/pdc-djifcdah 232GB (BIOS-raid)
/dev/mapper/pdc-djifcdah_part1 116GB (DM-raid)
/dev/mapper/pdc-djifcdah_part2 116GB (DM-raid)
/dev/sda 149GB samsung-hd160hj
/dev/sda1 99.3GB linux native
/dev/sda2 97.6 GB linux native
/dev/sda3 101GB linux native
/dev/sdb 149GB samsung-hd160hj
/dev/sdb1 99.3GB linux native
/dev/sdb2 97.6 GB linux native
/dev/sdb3 101GB linux native
/dev/sdc 149GB samsung-... etc.
/dev/sdc1 74.5GB fat16
/dev/sdc2 74.5GB fat16
/dev/sdd 149GB samsung-hd... etc
/dev/sdd1 74.5GB fat16
/dev/sdd2 74.5GB fat16
/dev/sde 232.8GB Maxtor-stm...etc

I suspect I would need to load a module when I start the installation? is that true? and if so which module would be appropriate? or am I missing something else here?

/dev/sde could be sacrificed , but I definitely need to keep my vista installation and the other partitions on the raid-10, so any suggestions would be very welcome, thanks in advance

Sandra

http://www.virtual-hideout.net/revie...Q6/index.shtml
... this one?

That mobo has a jmicron controller (gigabyte)
The onboard RAID appears is fake-raid. But it looks like linux has spotted it.
/dev/mapper/pdc-djifcdah 232GB (BIOS-raid) ... with two partitions on it.

Since you have your biggest investment with Vista legacy - best advise is to install openSUSE to the non-RAID disk. However, your partition list dosn't seem to match what you have told us...

You have two samsung drives formatted for linux!
What happened?

Guessing the 4 samsungs are supposed to be raid 1+0... That leaves the maxtor for openSUSE.

Yes, that's the mobo.
And I agree with you, it seems Yast doesn't interpret the partition tables the right way or the tables have changed in some obscure manner ? I think that is pretty disturbing...
Vista boots just fine. The samsung disks are not formatted with a linux filesystem, well, at least I did not do that. They were originally ntfs formatted.

After reboot following the aborted linux install however, the raid was degraded, two disks had been reverted to non-raid (after post, that message was displayed) and had to be rebuilt, fortunately that went fine, so the situation is again like I described previously (and as I wanted it to be pffff).

I am a bit confused now because the samsung disks are in fact connected to the Intel ICH9 and the maxtor to the gigabyte raid controller, weird? The raid is controlled through the Intel matrix storage console (ver 7.6) Or did I misinterpret that?

Could it be that the Yast installation system changes something during
the installation setup? Maybe the Yast partitioning program does when it reads the partition tables? That is what I suspect, but I haven't found any information on Yast yet, pointing out that way. That's why I didn't proceed installing, I am currently making a full backup of all vista partitions, when that is done, I can safely give it a try ;-)

Do I understand correctly that I will not be able to install linux on the drives attached to the Jmicron controller? Or at least not without rearranging all of the drives?

Truth: I never use (fake) onboard RAID. I advise customers to disable RAID in BIOS and use linux software RAID instead. Or use true HW RAID. (Note LSoft-RAID has speed advantages over BIOS fake-RAID.)

Though you can create a ntfs partition in soft-raid, I have no idea how to get vista on it. Doubt it is even possible.

It has been known for linux installers to bunta a pre-existing installation when reading it's drives. It is more likely that the BIOS responded to the YaST inquirey in a manner that stuffed things up.

You should probably unplug the raid drives for the suse install.

Actually I did consider HW-Raid, but my budget won't allow it just yet... you know christmas and all..

The system is now almost ready for the linux install attempt.
I am curious enough to try some fiddling around with the raid disks even if it screws up Vista, everything is backed up now so there are no drawbacks there from my point of view.
Linux has been my main OS since about 10 years now and I am curious to see how it will perform on this mobo with 2GB ram and an E6850 cpu. I do have some doubts about the graphics performance (HD2600XT) but I am gonna try it anyway, I'll inform you regarding my progress,

I have read about some recommendations of using AHCI, this is supposed to be preferred bij linux? Any insights on that?

Well, Opensuse installed just fine on the maxtor. With the raid re-connected, grub caused some problems (which I expected);
Manually removing the first line ( : " root(hd4,0) " ) from the options given when grub fails (in a non fatal manner), solved the problem.
Now I can boot linux, using the boot-menu (F12) and select the maxtor. When I want to boot vista, I have to do a cold-(re)boot, well for the time being I can live with that I suppose.

When I try a soft-reboot from linux to boot Vista, the raid disks and -config are not properly recognized by the controller. After a cold-reboot this does not happen, Vista boots fine in that case. Anyway, a partly successful installation I would say, I contacted Gigabyte about this issue and now await their response, to be continued?

I think there is a way to get the vista bootloader to load GRUB. That would be less painful than current.

For long term, you will need to rethink that vista investment. You may be better running vista on a single drive instead of RAID - especially if you do so much more with linux.

Would that be the same procedure when you add linux to the NT-bootloader? with "dd" and adding an entrance for linux in boot.ini?

GIYF:
http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Linux
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=609
http://port25.technet.com/archive/20...M-Support.aspx
... there, that should hold you

Dear 'S'
this is at the edge of my ken but I have noticed that there is a problem on Yast2 under suse 10.3 and there is a patch available from Nuvell to cure a loop back error.
Don't have a raid array but have managed to get a maxtor external drive to boot up on suse 10.3.Had to create a separate directory to house the boot options. Ignore this if I am stating the obvious. The above achieved more by luck than judgment. Why do you want vista-it's more cost than delivery.


Roy.

Having spent so much money on proprietary software there is a feeling of reluctance about giving it up. The money was spent in the first place because the software came with the computer... this is actually why I dithered for 18 months before changing. I had to give up Works, Publisher, Myst etc.

Another reason may be that the computer is a gift and the software is needed to interoperate with unenlightened freinds or collegues. (Reason I have skype installed).

It seems to need repeating that GRUB doesn't support RAID boots, and so the boot partition cannot be on a raid volume. In this case, drivers need to be available to support the fakeraid on the board. Note that true HW raid will show up as a single drive to linux.

You have a good observation about Vista. The disproportionate investment in an OS used on 90% of the system, but used only 10% of the time, is a little odd. OTOH: that 10% could be to play some online game which does not have a linux client.

Thanks for the links Simon, it looks indeed similar to adding linux to the NT boot loader, I should be able to get that to work, I'll let you know.

The main reason for purchasing Vista is keeping my windhoze knowledge up to date, so I bought it with my new pc. My kids are used to playing their games on ms-windows so for them its easier as well. Later on they will be taught how to handle linux so they can decide for themselves what to use. So from my point of view it was a good investment regardless of all the drawbacks of Vista.

EasyBCD is indeed a very easy to use tool , it worked fine, no problems anymore when booting either vista or linux, great! thanks again!

This I can appreciate - I kept a WinXP Home license for the same reason (last I'd used windows it was Win98)... only I discovered that it was more painful moving from nix to win than the original shift in the other direction.