SiI3112 SATA help needed with partitioning and installing
 

hi guys, total noob to linux and have done some searching around these forums to see if i could get any help but with my problem, but couldn't find anything quite relevant to my problem.

I've got mandrake 10, and am trying to install it on my computer. it's got a ga-k8nsnxp mobo with onboard SiI3112 sata raid chip.

i've currently got windows xp on it, but i want to partition the drive so i can install linux on there and still use XP.

on my cd that came with my mobo, it only has drivers for mandrake 9.0/.1 which is quite the crapper because i've only got mandrake 10

thanks for helping a noob

The 2.6 kernel used in mdk10 should have the sata driver in it; if not try mdk10.1-CE. It has a newer 2.6 kernel and there has been a lot of revisions to sata since mdk10's 2.6 kernel came out.

I also try to use sata disk with sil3112 (on asus 7n8x-e deluxe mobo)
I've a mandarke 10.1, with the 2.6.8 kernel
No pb to boot because hda is a standard ata drive, but impossible to mount a raid0 array on sata drive...

I read lot of things about 2.4 kernel but 2.6 seems to be able to have sata disk, but I can't mount anything.

I have /dev/sda & /dev/sdb, and also /dev/sda1 & /dev/sda2 as partitions but I haven't any /dev/ataraid
(Disks are two maxtor 160Go sata)

Thanks for any ideas...

# hdparm /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
HDIO_GET_MULTCOUNT failed: Operation not supported
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 19929/255/63, sectors = 320173056, start = 0

# hdparm /dev/sdb
/dev/sdb:
HDIO_GET_MULTCOUNT failed: Operation not supported
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 19929/255/63, sectors = 320173056, start = 0

# hdparm /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:
HDIO_GET_MULTCOUNT failed: Operation not supported
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 19929/255/63, sectors = 245762307, start = 63

# hdparm /dev/sda2
/dev/sda2:
HDIO_GET_MULTCOUNT failed: Operation not supported
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 19929/255/63, sectors = 394572465, start = 245762370

I'm not familiar with that sata controller but in most bios setups, you have to enable raid or the system will treat the two drives as two seperate drives. That's the first place I would check.

I didn't precise it but the raid is already enabled in bios. I've a lot of datas on it (and no pb on w2k).
The strange thing is linux see the 2 disks (like without any raid array) but with the size of the raid (320Go), and also see the 2 partitions of this array as 2 partitions of the 1st disk...

I tried to compile 2.6.8-1 kernel with sata and silicon image support inside (not in module), but it's the same result.

Silicon Image 3112 Mandrake 10.1 kernel 2.6.8
 

I`ve got kernel 2.6.8 smb mdk Sil image 3112 A, Gigabyte motherboard 2x150 GB Maxtor drives. The same problem of 2 separate /dev/sda and /dev/sdb drives occurs.
I installed the raid before by the bios utility, partitioned in M$U&^* XP to 3x 100GB NTFS drives. Now after trying to mount the partitions /dev/sda1 : not a valid superblock or something similar appears.
So far:
/dev/sda (1st maxtor 150 GB drive) appears as: 300GB 3 partitions unmountable
/dev/sdb (2nd maxtor 150 GB drive) appears as: 300 GB no partition unmountable

modules used:
sii_ata (i hope so, there is only this one sii_xyz something in the modules directory)
ataraid

I`ll try the:
mkraid command today or see around if it helps.
(mkraid /dev/md0) or similar.

sofar following topic have been useful to bring a little bit of light into the raid world of sii:

Software raid howto (sil image 3114 specific)
http://unclean.org/howto/sii3114_linux.html

yoper forum: SATA 3112 issues:
http://www.yoper.com/forum2/index.php?showtopic=1077
in german language:
http://www.yoper.de/portal/viewtopic.php?t=176

does anybody have an experience with medley raids? sofar i know: software raid is not useful for me, hardware raid exists with true SCSI chips and Sil Image PCI and onboard cards should be in the "medley" mode = working under 2.4 kernels with the "modprobe medley"

But what about kernel 2.6 ???