ubuntu 7.04 on raid-0 ??

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haloo101

77 posts

Master Geek

#14771 19-Jul-2007 17:00

I am trying to install ubuntu on my raid-0 configuration pc.
I have partitioned to 4 disk drives .. but it keep seeing only two physical drives. when i try to install it..
I am been trying to use fakeRAID as suggested on their support doc.. but it didn't help...
i really want to install ubuntu and this have been driving me mad for ages

Thanks

Shin

274 posts

Ultimate Geek

#79046 21-Jul-2007 01:20

haloo101: I am trying to install ubuntu on my raid-0 configuration pc.
I have partitioned to 4 disk drives .. but it keep seeing only two physical drives. when i try to install it..
I am been trying to use fakeRAID as suggested on their support doc.. but it didn't help...
i really want to install ubuntu and this have been driving me mad for ages

Thanks

If you set Raid-0 setup while in hardware configuration phase (before linux installation), it is natural that you only can see 2 hard drives.

You can partitioning hard drive while installing linux.

Those each hard drive represents two other hard drives on mirror.

If it's not the case and if you want to do software raid setup, check support docs.

Anyway, if two of your hard drive is not detected while installing, it is common when you connect those drives on on-board raid controller without software driver or sata controller

haloo101

77 posts

Master Geek

#79729 26-Jul-2007 09:40

If you set Raid-0 setup while in hardware configuration phase (before linux installation), it is natural that you only can see 2 hard drives.

You can partitioning hard drive while installing linux.

Those each hard drive represents two other hard drives on mirror.

If it's not the case and if you want to do software raid setup, check support docs.

Anyway, if two of your hard drive is not detected while installing, it is common when you connect those drives on on-board raid controller without software driver or sata controller

Yes i set up raid during bios phase (apparently my raid was one of those fake hardware raid). anyway i guess i won;t be using ubuntu since i dont want to lost all my data .. maybe i'll do it when i got all my data backuped...

Anyway i remembered some linux distro understand my raid configuration (maybe fedora or something)

Shin

274 posts

Ultimate Geek

#79751 26-Jul-2007 11:16

If you ever experienced any Linux distribution detected your hardware without prior setup, you may able to use that device driver on Ubuntu installation.

Check out Ubuntu support site with device name or driver name.

barf

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#79774 26-Jul-2007 13:42

don't use BIOS / hardware-level RAID in Linux without a really good reason to. Software / Kernel -level RAID is faster in ALL circumstances unless we're talking IBM blade servers with DMA offload engines(?).

It's better to trust the OS to manage your RAID system, since you have better tools, control, support, flexability and compatability than a BIOS you need to reboot to change a setting on. Linux software RAID uses all the optimisation and acceleration features of your RAID hardware anyway, so the benefit of hiding the disks from the OS is negated.

You can even forget to setup the disks in the RAID BIOS completely, as Linux does not rely on the old-fashioned BIOS routines that Windows does to determine disk configuration, we simply have better drivers in Linux when it comes to RAID and dynamic disk configurations.

Sniffing the glue holding the Internet together

NotALinuxGuru

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#80799 1-Aug-2007 21:48

Dudes,

I'm fighting the Ubuntu 7.04 installation on RAID 0 for days now and unfortunately with or without bios enabled RAID the result is the same.

I can partition the drives, I can then configure RAID with the install time wizard and I can see the raid disks being formated and mapped as per desired configuration. Then the installation continues and almost completes but it fais to install either GRUB or LILO.

If I boot with a liveCD then install mdadm I can see the raid drives and once I map them in the file system I see the proper file system on the disk that should have been mounted as /. But then I'm lost ... whatever I've tried I cannot make GRUB install.

Here are some more details about what I've done, maybe you can give me some ideas:

Disk Size Partition# PartitionSize PartitionType Bootable FStype

sda 320GB 1 10 GB primary yes RAID

2 1 GB primary no RAID

3 309 GB primary no RAID

sdb 320GB 1 10 GB primary yes RAID

2 1 GB primary no RAID

3 309 GB primary no RAID

sdc 80GB unpartitioned

Then I used the RAID configuration wizard where I've created 3 RAID0 arrays

RAID #0 sda1+sdb1 20GB ext3 /

RAID #1 sda2+sdb2 2GB swap

RAID #2 sda3+sdb3 618GB ext3 /home

I'm new to Linux and I do have many things unclear about it. One of it is how it manages/enumerates the disks.

With the above configuration I've decided to install the OS on sdc and forget about RAID for a moment. It went OK and when it asked me where to install GRUB I've said hd2 (i.e. on the 3rd drive). It all went ok but then it failed to boot. It turned out that GRUB should have been installed on hd0. Why?

Getting back to the RAID problem assuming that I get to the point of seeing from the LiveCD the following disks:
/dev/sda
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdc
/dev/md0
/dev/md1
/dev/md2

on which drive should I try to install grub so that I can boot the linux installation from the raid drive? How would the grub install commands look like?

Thanks a lot for your help!

barf

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#80876 2-Aug-2007 14:13

don't place the /boot partition on an md device, it's possible to do but need to hack around in the terminal during install.

put /boot at /dev/sda1 for example because GRUB and LILO don't have software RAID driver in them they can't see the kernel image to begin booting.

Sniffing the glue holding the Internet together

NotALinuxGuru

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#80917 2-Aug-2007 19:58

barf: don't place the /boot partition on an md device, it's possible to do but need to hack around in the terminal during install.

put /boot at /dev/sda1 for example because GRUB and LILO don't have software RAID driver in them they can't see the kernel image to begin booting.

Right, that question hit me this morning since I've realised that by the time grup was to be installed no RAID disk was mapped on the system.

So a small primary partition, ext3 formated and mapped to /boot would do the trick while the rest of the configuration stays the same ... Hm, that sounds good. I'll let you know if I succed.

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NotALinuxGuru

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#81040 3-Aug-2007 18:33

Well, I have a small progress: GRUB is now installed during the install sequence yet on reboot I got an Error 2 message. On a VirtualPC simulation with identical disc structure I can access GRUB's menu but the boot fails with some Int 14 ... info at the bottom of the screen.

While playing around with the disks I've managed now to have inconsistent RAID information and before attempting anything else I will have to figure out how to reset the RAID configuration so that I can rebuild from scratch at install time.

This Linux installation business got to be really annoying but it is damn intriguing at the same time. I've promised to give up several times but somehow I can't :))

joerdgz

1 post

Wannabe Geek

#81084 4-Aug-2007 10:47

I have more o less the same problem. I'm trying to install Kubuntu on a old computer (Pentium Celeron 900MHz, 768mb RAM, and 2 Hard Drive 20GB) My question is, does my computer needs a RAID CONTROLLER to make a RAID-0 ?

NotALinuxGuru

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#81387 7-Aug-2007 03:28

I've done it! Thanks barf for your help.

joerdgz, I have the controller disabled and the RAID 0 arrays are controlled by a software driver.