Had to create separate /boot for SLES 9 installation on Dell Precision 470 (SATA)
 

I had posted an earlier message regarding installation of SLES 9 on a Dell Precision 470.

I was able to sucessfully complete the installation subject to two caveats:

1. It HAD to install on the first disk (/dev/sda). All attempts to install SLES 9 on /dev/sdb failed. I was attempting to install SLES 9 SP3 x86_64.

2. On the /dev/sda device, I HAD to create a separate /boot partition. Attempts to create /dev/sda1 as both / and /boot failed upon installation reboot (GRUB, failed to load stage 2...).

Note that there are no such problems when installing SUSE LINUX 10.

The question(s) are:

1. Does anyone know why I had to create a separate /boot partition on SLES 9 and not on SUSE Linux 10?

2. Given that the installation will not even boot from /dev/sdb, is it fair to assume that any attempt to do software RAID will be useless?

3. Are there any best practices out there to protect the root disk? On other **IX OS, there are "standard" procedures to mirror your root disk. Is there anything like that for SuSE short of hardware mirroring?

Many thanks in advance.

JB

1. I usually create a /boot partition on Suse 10.0, too
2. I have often used software raid with Suse 8.x, 9.x and 10.0, no problem occured
3. You can use a supported raid controller.

It seems that the Dell Precision 470 has not been qualified by Novell/SuSE at this time for SLES 9.

I tested my procedures on a different machine and it worked. I think there's something going on with the ICH5 controller for RAID and the SuSE distribution.


Thanks for the posting.

JB