Mandrake 10 SATA Raid 0 support problem
 

Hi,
I am trying to setup my new Server with Mandrake 10 and RAID 0. I have a promise raid 0 card, with two SATA hard drives. The promise card works fine, detects two drives and makes one RAID 0 drive from them. However, when I boot Mandrake 10 from the CD, it finds both drives and asks which one I want to install on. Well, obviously I only want Mandrake 10 to see ONE drive - as a RAID 0 partition. Can someone please tell me if I can indeed setup this O/S as Raid 0 this way? Why does the O/S see two drives and not as ONE Raid Array.
Finally, if this cannot be done , how can I then setup Software raid within the os please (remembering this is version 10).
thanks in advance.
Steve

Have you solved the problem?
 

Hi!

I have the same problem as you. Do you know why it sees two hard drives and not just one?

Steve

no idea
 

Hi Steve,

sorry mate, no idea here! No one has ever answered this thread. Sure is bloody annoying though. I ended up just using the Ctrl F function to copy the disks together and then software raid inside Mandrake.
Could not be bothered waiting for some bright spark to work it out. My best guess is a kernel stuff up in this version. BTW - redhat works perfectly, just did not want to go to thier stupid subscription service $@#$#@

regards
Steve

Hi again!
 

I have solved the problem with raid 0, for Mandrake 10.0.

When you come to the partition part at the installation, you choose custom partionen.

Then you switch to expert mode. Create a swap partition, a root partion (/), and the rest of the hard drive, you choose to linux raid, not ext3 or anything else. Then you switch to the next hard drive and create a linux raid, not ext3. Don't forgott to add these spaces to the raid by clicking "add to raid". A raid button has been created and you can specify where you will have the raid, which directory.

/Stefan

Hi Stefan,
Yes, that is what I did too ! However, it should just recongnize ONE drive when the installation starts - being the whole point of Hardware Raid.
regards
Steve

it sounds like to me that you just created software raid, thus defeating the point of having the promise raid controller...

exactly, waste of time, but I needed my server up and going. So, for anyone else going to try this -don't . Mandrake 10 DOES not support hardware raid on this model - yet. Perhaps the next kernel version will?

hi,

could one of you who solved the problem explain how to solve it in detail, please? i'm having the same problem with my maxtor 160GB sata drive... i tried to install it several times by setting the partition types to "linux raid" and adding them to the raid drive, but it still hangs in the middle of installing the files... without doing that, it hangs during the partitioning....

it would be great if you could help me there.

I solved my problem by installing winxp on another hd that i temporarily installed. what a PITA...

that's what my temporary solution is too, for now... i'm still hoping that there's just something really simple that i'm overlooking, but it doesn't look like it... i've tried just about everything. :(

Mandrake 10 working on a Sata Raid 0 winth ASUS mb
 

I was running linux Mandrake 10 Community (not even the final distro) on a old machine PII 800 Mhz with Promise 100 controller and 2 raid-o (mirror) 2x30 + 2x80 IDE disk, only with 128 MB

The promise give some problems for a while without even give signal. At the end I discover that the RAID 0 was broken at least from 2 months!

1 of disks of firt RAID-0 ( mirror 30 gb) was mulfunctioning. This had the /boot and / partitions in it.

The second RAID 80x2 was working and contains the /home partition.

I migrate the good 30 gb IDE disk (with / ) and 1 of 80 gb (with data!) to a new hardware.

Just after booted, the mandrake recognized the change in hardware, and after some hardware config made with the mandrake Plug&Play auto mechanism, IT WAS RUNNING ON A ENTIRE NEW HARDWARE.

So I did not install the linux on the new hardware, just get 1 disk from a hold to a new hardware. This installation was (is!) a corporate server with
- Fileshare and autentication with Samba
- proxy
- imap
- firewall
- mail server
- bitdefender antivirus
- web server with nuke
- mysql
- groupware

Do You understand how long can take build up a server like that, with testing, in a corporate real situation? At least 2 days if You are smart.

After that first relocation, it was the moment to use the new SATA mirorr RAID-0.

The motherboard is a ASUS A7V600-X, wich have RAID SATA controller on-board.

I putted in the box 2 new SATA 120 GB. The do a lot of heat (High temperature).

The SATA bios menu on ASUS is simple and straighforward, similar to promise's one.

I build up the miror.

Rebooted the linux, I had /dev/hde ready, I made a filesystem with fdisk and formatted with mke2fs.

I had 120 gb ready and mount on /home/ after modified /etc/fstqab and /etc/mtab

Then I copy data from old 80 gb IDE to new /home on SATA

ALways seem to work fine, I was very happy to bill som 500 Euro to customer for a so big work.

But unfortunatly, days after, people from corporate complain abouit some long period of very slow behaviours of the server. 2 minute to open a fileshare is not admitables!

After some investigation of /var/log/dmesg I discover an IRQ conflict with PCI.

PCI pretend to use IRQ 4 and 3 in conflict to SATA, at least it seem that

So I tried a lot of stuff and read on net for some hours before finding a solution.

I try without benefith to
- disable GPM (wich use IRQ3)
- relocate serial 1 to IRQ 10
- disable USB, Sound Card etc and its init.d scripts
- try to poke with /proc
- replace network card

At the end the solution was to impose to PCI the IRQ exclusion of the use of 5,9,11,14,15

This a temporary solution working fine until the kernel will not manage the problem itself.

That made the VIA8237SATA chipset was able to use
irq 4 for IDE 0 and 1
irq 14 for IDE 2
irq 15 for IDE 3

and the rest in consequence.

I found that solution looking at /var/log/dmesg file, that signal any conflict or hardware problem on booting.

Verified that there was a conflict ewith a certain IRQ, I simply excluded in the motherboard bios the IRQ assignment to PCI.

One after the other , rebooting each time, I exclude all problematic IRQ to PCI assignment just arriving to the goal.

Some times is better to ear linux instead to try to fight it.

I have to say that my pci slot was ALL free from card, as Network card and sound was onboard. I do not know if this method work with some PCI card installed.

Hope this can help.

Loris Palmerini

Re: no idea
 

The SATA cards that show as two seperate drives are not truly hardware raid. The drivers that come with the card are proprietary software raid.
In these situations, Linux software raid is the only option but it is a good solution.

Which promise card do you guys have?