On Wednesday 20 June 2007, Greg Freemyer wrote:

I don't know about your MB, but most onboard raid is fake-raid.

http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html

If yours is fake-raid and you don't need Windows dual boot capability, then using software raid is your preferred choice.  ie. Fake raid does NOT offload any CPU load,

And that failure to offload any raid processing is a GOOD thing, as your CPU is vastly more powerful than all but the most expensive Raid Cards and software raid is fast, robust, flexible, an in most cases out-performs hardware raid. (When the raid card starts to cost more than your MOBO+CPU it MIGHT actually outperform software raid, but this is seldom born out for raids of the size the OP is contemplating.) -- _____________________________________ John Andersen -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Thursday 21 June 2007 06:54, James Tremblay wrote:

does any one know of a good tutorial on build a boot disk like the "mini" that comes with each distro?

Hi James, There's a script 'mkbootdisk' on the 1st CD, but I think it's for floppies bootdisk only. On the other hand, if you just want 'a bootdisk', then any mini Opensuse CD will be able to load any other Opensuse version. In Redhat/FC, the bootdisk will only load the same version of distro. Cool Suse! -- Fajar Priyanto | Reg'd Linux User #327841 | Linux tutorial http://linux2.arinet.org 7:36am up 0:27, 2.6.18.2-34-default GNU/Linux Let's use OpenOffice. http://www.openoffice.org

Thanks all. It turns out I *do* have the so-called 'fake-RAID' as was suggested earlier. I've made some progress....but.... Greg Freemyer wrote:

On 6/20/07, Richard Creighton wrote:

...

At the risk of appearing stupid, which I am willing to do, I recently purchased a ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard with intergral RAID5 hardware controller. I also purchased 4 WD 400G SATA drives to make a 1.09T (usable space) raid5 array under Linux, SUSE 10.2. <snip>

I don't know about your MB, but most onboard raid is fake-raid.

http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html <snip>

This was very helpful

<snip> If you need dual boot to the raid, the you can look at the dmraid module and see if your controller is supported.

Greg <snip>

...tracking down the latest incarnation of *dmraid* from the author's website, I found a version that supported the NForce/Nvidia chipset. Installing it on a 5th drive (my 'Plan B') below:

Failing that, if I install a 5th drive, an IDE device for the purpose of booting the system, is there a driver/module that I could load after booting that would allow me to use the hardware raid5 drives rather than depend on the software raid? I get the following results:

ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -r /dev/sda: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors, data@ 0 /dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors, data@ 0 /dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors, data@ 0 /dev/sdd: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors, data@ 0 ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -ay -i ERROR: device-mapper target type "raid45" not in kernel I am using 10.2 with the latest kernel available via normal updates that I am aware of without going to alpha versions. Even though this system is a dual-core AMD, I chose to install a 32bit OS initially to get things set up before tackling the somewhat sparse 64 bit world that I see has even more challanges ahead :( OS: Linux 2.6.18.8-0.3-bigsmp i686 System: openSUSE 10.2 (i586) KDE: 3.5.5 "release 45.4" My question now appears to be, what do I have to do to get the 'raid45' target type error resolved? I don't want to use a 'lower' raid level than raid 5 because with 1Tb of space, I want very badly to have the redundancy offered by that mode without an unnecessary redundancy of hardware backup required by 'lower' raid levels. As the fake-raid supports level 5, I'd like to use it if possible. My next goal would be to be able to install and boot using the raid5/dmraid techniques suggested in the above URL, but for now, I'd be content with solving the 'raid45' error. Thanks in advance. Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Greg Freemyer wrote:

Richard, (I'm top posting intentionally).

I'm confused, you said previously you were never going to run windows on the box, so why are you researching the windows / linux compatibility dm-raid driver?

It has nothing to do with Windoze. It has to do with the fact that I want to use the 4 drive RAID5 hardware (fake-raid) drive as my system drive which would act as a large drive containing MBR, /boot, /, /home, /var, /everythingelse amounting to 1.09TB utilizing the 4x400G SATA drives (which is all the MB can directly control). In order to get *something* up, I salvaged an old 120G IDE drive because the MB has an IDE controller also and put the CDRom and 1IDE HD as a (hopefully temporary) bootable system. It is looking like I can't use the MB fake-raid drive array as a boot device under SUSE even though I could if I were to degrade the system and use Windoze. I would rather throw the system in to the trash than to use M$ products, so I will use the 5th drive unless I can find a way to boot from the 4 drive hardware fake-raid array. If I am ever successful, I will deploy the configuration, if not, it isn't yet quite economical to require 5 drives when 4 *should* do the job (and would if I didn't hate M$ so much).

ie. md-raid - native linux software raid. Does not support fake-raid bios, but talks directly to the drives. Raid setup is maintained in a linux generic way. Lots of users so it is easy to get answers and Howto info.

I have not been able to find how to do this DURING INSTALLATION. I can create the software array but I am warned that it will NOT be bootable nor can a MBR be created nor can a swap partition be created because until the boot is complete, the software array is not available/stable. That is the warning message I get (and heed). I can install to a 5th drive and create the array, but this is a 5 drive solution to a 4 drive problem.

dm-raid - linux fake-raid driver. Reads raid config info from the controller bios. Because every fake-raid controller has a seperate api, it has specialized api modules for each controller type. Since it is in no way generic, it has lots more code and is much less well tested than md-raid. Also, you will find it harder to ask questions and get reliable answers.

To the best of my knowledge, md-raid is highly preferred unless you need to be able to dual boot your machine. In the case of a dual boot, windows uses the controller bios to setup the raid, so you need dm-raid to ensure linux sees the same raid array the windows does.

I believe md-raid is supported directly during opensuse 10.2 install, so if you go that way you don't have any research / work to do. Just use it. <snip> Any ideas on how to use the 'fake-raid' during the install AS A BOOT DEVICE would be appreciated. As I stated, I can't see how to use it as

If a driver exists and can be loaded at boot time, then the fake-raid controller solution is the right way to go in this case. There are drives available for several (Adaptec comes to mind) controllers I have seen that can be loaded during installation. I am hoping a suitable driver exists for this ASUS board. the root device or boot device, only as a data device. Thanks, Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Richard Creighton wrote:

I have not been able to find how to do this DURING INSTALLATION. I can create the software array but I am warned that it will NOT be bootable nor can a MBR be created nor can a swap partition be created because until the boot is complete, the software array is not available/stable. That is the warning message I get (and heed). I can install to a 5th drive and create the array, but this is a 5 drive solution to a 4 drive problem.

I have a bootable RAID1 (software raid). GRUB looks at the drives for the initrd to load the raid1 module. Do you have the raid45 module in your initrd modules?

Any ideas on how to use the 'fake-raid' during the install AS A BOOT DEVICE would be appreciated. I think the main limitation is GRUB, as it needs to be able to access /boot/grub, meaning it has to be able to read the disk. It cannot load a driver from the very drive it needs the driver for to be able to read. It is simple with boot on your IDE drive. As I stated, I can't see how to use it as the root device or boot device, only as a data device.

Root on the array is no problem, but it is definitely easiest to have boot (and therefore the kernel, initrd, and /boot/grub/*) on a GRUB natively reachable drive. On my system (only raid 1, including boot), GRUB sees the individual drives when looking for boot, i.e. /dev/hda5. So once it has found boot, it can load everything it needs to load root on the raid1. If GRUB can see the individual drive, i.e. sdax of the array to read boot, it would probably work, but may be too complicated for the tools. In other words, if your boot was on your array, if you knew which disk actually has boot so you can give GRUB the location in a way it can see, i.e. sda2 or whatever, it should work, but may need manual config (i.e. I have had better success from the GRUB command line to install on the MBR of a particular drive, looking for boot on a particular drive, even though in menu.lst the root dev is md0). HTH. -- Joe Morris Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 10.2 x86_64 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:

Richard Creighton wrote:

...

I get the following results: ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -r /dev/sda: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors, data@ 0 /dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors, data@ 0 /dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors, data@ 0 /dev/sdd: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors, data@ 0

ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -ay -i ERROR: device-mapper target type "raid45" not in kernel

It is probably not in your initrd. BTW, a quick search shows it is called raid456.

<snip> Thank you all....this initiates another hunt but at least there is a glow at the end of the tunnel :) Gosh...I hope that isn't a train!!!!! Richard PS... I'm 64 years old....I hope I can actually get this solved before time runs out. I don't want my epitaph to read "Windoze won!" :)

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Carlos E. R. wrote:

The Friday 2007-06-22 at 03:21 -0400, Richard Creighton wrote:

...

The ultimate goal should be to have the best raid 5 possible with the hardware you have ;-p

<snip> ...I did. In fact, in order to get the 5th drive to run my tests, I had to cannibalize an older RedHat system that is 'wounded' because I lost a cpu fan and damaged the cpu chip. I was going to replace the MB in that system at some point but now, I may also be short a drive having had to use it in what I thought was ample hardware; A new ASUS system MB with 4 SATA drives and with a so-called hardware raid controller built-in to the MB. As it turns out, that controller is a 'fake-raid' which borrows cpu cycles but still, with the hardware I had, under Windoze, the configuration would have worked (demonstrated), but I refuse to contaminate my system with that OS and I believe anything Windoze can do, Linux can (or should) be able to do better. So far (and until now), my belief in Linux has been vindicated and there has been nothing I have needed or wanted to do that Linux hasn't been able to do. I would hate to go to my grave with Windoze doing something that Linux cannot for simple want of a proper driver or a few magic incantations in some config file made by someone a lot smarter than I am during installation. I should not have to cannibalize old hardware to make my favorite OS do what my most reviled OS can do. I used to teach OS theory in a local college before my stroke took away much of my mental abilities and left me struggling at times to remember even how to turn the darn thing on,. I am hoping that someone out there has the answer. I read an article (referring to Umbuntu if I remember correctly) which explained how to do it in that distribution successfully, but I prefer SUSE and would rather what I consider a superior distribution overall add this feature rather than that I should have to digress to what I consider a slightly lesser distro (but still *infinitely* preferable to anything Microsoft makes). I know it can be done in other distros, or so I am lead to believe it has been successfully done, so I am looking to make it happen with SUSE. Thanks, Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Carlos E. R. wrote:

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The Friday 2007-06-22 at 07:46 -0400, Richard Creighton wrote:

...

...

The ultimate goal should be to have the best raid 5 possible with the hardware you have ;-p

<snip>

...I did. In fact, in order to get the 5th drive to run my tests, I had to cannibalize an older RedHat system that is 'wounded' because I lost a cpu fan and damaged the cpu chip. I was going to replace the MB in that system at some point but now, I may also be short a drive having had to use it in what I thought was ample hardware; A new ASUS system MB with 4 SATA drives and with a so-called hardware raid controller built-in to the MB. As it turns out, that controller is a 'fake-raid' which borrows cpu cycles but still, with the hardware I had, under Windoze, the configuration would have worked (demonstrated), but I refuse to contaminate my system with that OS and I believe anything Windoze can do, Linux can (or should) be able to do better.

Thus, use software raid in linux, which also works out of the box. No need to use the fake-raid drivers, and has probably the same speed, and decidly better support and compatibility.

I don't see any advantage in using the fake raid method, except using windows - and you aren't, so why go the difficult road?

With software raid you do not need an extra drive, just a plain /boot partition replicated on all disks. I'm almost sure it is documented somewhere.

I'm planning on experimenting with that. I recently bought an IBM Netfinity X232 server, with 4 18G SCSI disks. I've currently got SUSE 10.2 running on it, but without RAID. -- Use OpenOffice.org http://www.openoffice.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Kenneth Schneider wrote: <snip>

...

...

...

The ultimate goal should be to have the best raid 5 possible with the hardware you have ;-p

<snip>

...I did. In fact, in order to get the 5th drive to run my tests, I had to cannibalize an older RedHat system that is 'wounded' because I lost a cpu fan and damaged the cpu chip. I was going to replace the MB in that system at some point but now, I may also be short a drive having had to use it in what I thought was ample hardware; A new ASUS system MB with 4 SATA drives and with a so-called hardware raid controller built-in to the MB. As it turns out, that controller is a 'fake-raid' which borrows cpu cycles but still, with the hardware I had, under Windoze, the configuration would have worked (demonstrated), but I refuse to contaminate my system with that OS and I believe anything Windoze can do, Linux can (or should) be able to do better.

You are right that linux _should_ be able to do that same things that windows does. The problem is the s l o w adoption by the hardware providers in providing *proper* drivers for their hardware, like ATI and Nvidia are trying to do. This will not happen until they get together with the kernel developers to come up with a solution.

Very true. I have fought this type of battle for years and I support vendors that *try* and do my best to vote with my feet against those vendors that are so myopic that they only see M$ and ignore Linux and Mac or anyone else. I have had very good luck in the past with ASUS and I do believe Nvidia is trying (their web site has Linux drivers as does their MB documentation/hardware kit) but as new as their support is, SUSE 10.2 is newer and I appreciate the difficulty of the manufacturers trying to hit a rapidly moving target such as openSUSE. M$ succeeds in part because only one entity controls the product, with *us* (meaning the Linux community), there are thousands of contributers. That is both our strength and our weakness. Strength because we cannot be railroaded into accepting crappola, weak because it is often hard to get even two people to agree on anything, much less thousands. Even so, I opt for the challenge of Linux and I will continue to vote with my feet and work to make Linux work better than M$ in everything *including* booting from a 'fake-raid' capable mother board. I have 'Googled' well over a thousand articles on this subject, many before posting the first query here on this support forum and I can assure you that using the 'md-raid' method is not so pretty either (per other suggestions on this thread - (good link at http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=158475 ... follow the docs he wrote if you want a good tutorial). Anyway, the search continues. The method actually works with Umbuntu live cd install with a tweak but I prefer to make SUSE work as that is my preferred distro. Thanks for everyone's help... Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org