HOWTO - Discovering and using existing sata raid (eg sil3112)

[Grey]

For whatever reason, when I upgraded to Hoary and kernel 2.6.10, I decided to test this one more time. And you know what? I freaking LOVE YOU GUYS!

I can confirm that this works with a Promise Fasttrak 378, and IDE hard drives. My Linux partition has just become incredibly more useful, thanks to everyone in this thread. I am going to have a huge smile on my face for the rest of the night. I don't need Windows anymore.

[justme]

the mapper finds and activates my raid partitions,
I can see them in GParted, but the filesystem on them remains unknown.
I know it's ntfs, but even forced mounting doesn't work.

they are :
via_bhbacfbfae via_bhbacfbfae1

any idear ?

[MiddleBrooker]

Hy Guys,

First: MANY THANKS for this howto because it works perfectly

Second: Now I would like to install directly Ubuntu Hoary into my two SATA Hard Disk in RAID 0 configuration by the Nvidia Raid Chip, builtin in my Shuttle XPC with Nforce3 based mainboard.

In my previous test I've saw that Hoary can recognize correctly my SATA Hard Disk in RAID 0 mode but at the partion step I don't see only one disk with the total capacity of my TWO phisical disk....I see always two disk like a setup without RAID 0 configuration; the reason should be that my RAID 0 configuration is for Linux a software raid.

After that I've tried to make two equal partitions on both disks with Linux RAID filesystem, so I can setup the MD software raid...all seems to be ok but not for the Grub installation, because seems that Grub cannot be installed on Software RAID partition.

My next test is to make the same things but install Grub on a normal floppy disk using this procedure by Fuche :

In the installation menu, I opened a shell and navigated to /target/boot/grub
There I edited the devices.map file (nano devices.map) and add a new line at the end -- (fd0) /dev/fd0
Save and exit, and in the line for grub installation path I enter /dev/fd0 and thst's it, it worked.

I hope that this is not a problem for boot up my root partition after a reboot, buy I've a lot of dubious.

I would like to have some suggestion about this type of installation, because I like the RAID 0 speed and for me this is a big issue, I'll be very happy to install both Windows and Ubuntu into my RAID 0 setup.

Another question is: Should be a good idea to make my partiton before Ubuntu installation through a Partition Magic bootdisk that is able to see my RAID 0 setup like only one disk with the total capacity of my phisical two disk?


Thanks for all the replyes.
MiddleBrooker

[jr_G-man]

This howto worked great for me...and things are working fine according to the original instructions.

However, does anybody have any idea how to set this up automatically during bootup?

[shakey]

Sorry for dragging this thread up, but it seemed appropriate

I followed the how-to given at the start of this thread, and all went well. almost.
I can see my raid array in GParted fine and correct, but when i try to run the "activateraid" scrip i get this:

INFO: Activating stripe RAID set "sil_afaddgceajabb"
INFO: Activating partition RAID set "sil_afaddgceajabb1"
INFO: Activating partition RAID set "sil_afaddgceajabb5"
mount: special device dev/mapper/sil_afaddgceajabb1 does not exist

But it does exist! I've seen it!

Help? Please?

[gorilla]

thanks for the guide, works like a charme
just allow me a few stupid questions:

is there a way I can prevent getting icons of the mounted partitions on the desktop? It's not really important, but I prefer a icon-less desktop.

The drives are pretty slow, but hdparm doesn't work properly on it. Is there something I can do to improve performance?

anyone using it with read/write access? how safe would it be? the dmraid readme states that since it's a rc version, write access could destroy data. I just wonder how likely this "could" is.. it's just that since my linux drive is pretty small, i'm in a need for alternative hdspace..

[vfactor]

Hi

Thank you for the tutorial

I am a comple newbie to Linux and have a hard time understanding it but with these how to, my life gets much easier

I follow this guide to make my Ubuntu sees the RAID 0 build on my on board SATA RAID controller (Sil3112 , NFS-S)

Everything goes smooth ( I didn't do step 2 ) til I do ls /dev/mapper/ which only return me one item control

well as you can guess I am stuck

By the way I have a HighPoint Rocket 133SB on board too.

On /dev/ folder I saw my hard disk on the Highpoint controller and the satas on the SATA RAID but can't mount them, is that normal ?


My kernel is the latest one 2.6.10 with Ubuntu patches.


Any help is appreciate.

Thank you

[derelict_frog]

This looks like exactly what i need to get my raid0 partition to show up, i have the silicon 3112 controller onboard.

But when u say these bits:
"3) Install the device mapper userspace. This is located at ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/dm/
You might as well get the latest version, which at time of writing is device-mapper.1.00.19.tgz.
Untar this somewhere and go into the directory tar creates.
then run
./configure
sudo make install

4) download the dmraid software
http://people.redhat.com/~heinzm/sw...current.tar.bz2

Untar it, and again go into the directory it creates.
./configure
sudo make install"

Does dragging the configure files into root terminal then running them fromt here work? and where do i have to type in sudo make install?

And after doing 3 & 4 after im sure they didnt work i create the file and run it from root terminal and get this:

root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu # /home/ubuntu/activateraid
/home/ubuntu/activateraid: line 1: dmraid: command not found
mount: special device dev/mapper/casper-cow does not exist


The things in my ls /dev/mapper/ are:
casper-cow casper-snapshot control


Any help would be awesome!!!!!!!!!!!

[Alessio]

Hi


Everything goes smooth ( I didn't do step 2 ) til I do ls /dev/mapper/ which only return me one item control

Same problem, with promise fasttrack. I must divide the array in two device with stripe mode? Now the controller view 2 mirrored device..

randa:~# dmraid -r
/dev/hde: pdc, "pdc_eaedhfdh", mirror, ok, 80293185 sectors, data@ 0
/dev/hdf: pdc, "pdc_eaedhfdh", mirror, ok, 80293185 sectors, data@ 0

then..

randa:~# dmraid -ay   
pdc_eaedhfdh already active
ERROR: dos: reading /dev/mapper/pdc_eaedhfdh[Invalid argument]

[Marcs316]

Sorry for bumping such an old thread, but I've been lost for a while trying to get this to work. Here's what I have so far:

I've got everything install and the RAID is recognized as "via_bdibeiahhj". Everything seems ok but when I try and mount it from "/dev/mapper/via_bdibeiahhj" it tells me it's already mounted.

My only choices are "control" "via_bdibeiahhj" and "via_bdibeiahhj1".

The command I've been using to try and mount the device is:

mount -t ntfs -o users,owner,ro,umask=000 /dev/mapper/via_bdibeiahhj /mnt/windows

Any help would be great. Sorry if I haven't posted in any correct format, I hope you can make sense of all that. And sorry for bumping this, I'm just stuck.