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Fed9 wont boot with HW RAID10

hi all, long time no see

im setting up some data servers with Fedora9. i have 4 640Gb SATA2 drives in a hardware RAID 10 configuration.

during install, Fedora see's only one drive, which it should (which means no SW raid at all). however, after install finishes, and reboots, it freezes/halts saying "GRUB" and will not go any further.

i have tried using linux rescue, using the following commands:

Code:

# chroot /mnt/sysimage

# vim /boot/grub/grub.conf

  (turned off the "hidden menu" and increased timeout to 15 seconds)

#grub-install /dev/mapper/isw_ciihiabhei_Volume0

  (the dejfaajhaa bit is a timestamp as far as i can tell. when install asked for disks to be initialized, it showed this location of the disk. i assume this is due to the RAID)

# sync

# exit

# exit

which gets me a bit further...

after reboot, it goes on to say "error 2", which according to this website, means:

Code:

2 : "Selected disk doesn't exist"



This error is returned if the device part of a device- or full filename refers to a disk or BIOS device that is not present or not recognized by the BIOS in the system.

so it cant find the disk.

whats my next steps?

EDIT:

looking around says i need to post more info, so here you are.

grub.conf

Code:

boot=/dev/mapper/isw_ciihiabhei_Volume0

default=0

timeout=15

splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

#hiddenmenu

title Fedora (2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64)

    root (hd0,0)

    kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64 ro root=UUID=50d9aeb-3dba-48e2-9ac3-ae26b3dad281 rhgb quiet

    initrd /initrd-2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64.img

Looks like you are using firmware RAID to me, as dev/mapper/isw_ciih*** etc. is involved. I'm not an expert on Fedora 9, but it seems like many distros install to firmware/fakeraid with difficulty. Grub's ability to recognize bios setup raid has no relation to the kernel's ability to use the raid. You typically have to setup an initramfs and initialize the raid with dmraid.

Quote:

#grub-install /dev/mapper/isw_ciihiabhei_Volume0
(the dejfaajhaa bit is a timestamp as far as i can tell. when install asked for disks to be initialized, it showed this location of the disk. i assume this is due to the RAID)

Not a timestamp, that's the name dmraid gives to firmware RAID.

There are a couple of threads on setting up this type of RAID on this forum, but not specifically for fedora 9. There are Howto's for ubuntu and gentoo, I'll copy the links over if I have time, gotta run

many thanks. i'll have a looksie