Bernard Lheureux wrote:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- =-=-=-=-= Hello all, this is my 1st mail on this list I just joined a few days ago... Could you help us ? One of my friends is trying to install an IBM xSeries 260 Server with 2 SAT Disks in RAID1, everything is working correctly from the IBM RAID Side, the Raid 1 Volume is correctly created and configured but when he tries to install SLES 9.1 on it, the disks are seen as 2 separates PHYSICAL DISKS instead of ONE LOGICAL DRIVE, the module loaded to drive the SATA RAID is sata_piix, could you help us solve this problem and use this machine in a normal RAID1 configuration ? Thanks for your forthcoming help...
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Bernard (I thought I replied earlier but cannot find it sorry if this is a second post), Here are a few things. 1) Most important, since you are using SLES 9 (I do not think there is a 9.1 yet) you should be able to open a support incident using your registration code. SuSE/Novell does respond to these, just go to portal.suse.com. 2) Also Novell has an online set of discussion forums at: http://support.novell.com/forums/2su.html 3) It sounds like this is an software/BIOS raid adapter (e.g. promise, SI, highpoint, etc.), not a true hardware raid with XOR processor and RAM cache onboard. Some of them do have good linux drivers, but many are troublesome. From the BIOS it will appear the RAID volume is configured, but without the correct/working drivers (usually from the manufacturer, not SuSE) it will appear as two drives. Of course their Windows drivers work much better for some reason :( 4) Check IBM's site for Linux drivers for this model of server. They are pretty good about supporting SuSE and Linux in general. If no luck there, then see if you can find the manufacturer/brand of the RAID controller - I doubt that is by IBM. Then check their site for Linux drivers. 5) If none of the above works then use the Yast partitioning utility to partition the drives and mirror them as RAID 1 using software RAID. It will probably be somewhat faster than the builtin RAID chip, though not quite as convenient (IMHO - others can give you hundreds of reasons why software RAID is really better :). Hope this helps - Richard