It took some time, but now it works like I want. This week I installed OS11.1 on a RAID-1 configuration with grub on the /boot section (also in RAID). That works like a charm now. I have 3 partitions created on these RAID disks: /, /boot and /home. Swap is on a seperate harddisk.
To get openSUSE installed I had to disconnect two HDD’s that are controlled via a controller card. When the controller connected drives were connected installation didn’t work:
Probing EDD stalled installation (hard reset required and edd=off to start installation)
GRUB wasn’t able to install device out of reach
Now it is all up and running and I want those two disks connected again. But if I do so then after the controller bios it stops right there. I have a blinking cursor in the top-left corner and no response at all. >:(
i think the first thing you have to do is prove to yourself that that
controller card works…to me it sounds like it is dead…bad dead,
not just dead, but killing other stuff DEAD!!
when was the last time it worked?
tell me you can boot up with a SUSE Live CD with that card installed,
and then, mount the connected drives read/write and actually access them…
if you can’t then have to ask yourself WHY NOT??
does it work with Redmond’s software? AND, did the card come with
“Windows Drivers”…
Positively not dead. Last time it worked yesterday, with the live CD. :)]
tell me you can boot up with a SUSE Live CD with that card installed,
and then, mount the connected drives read/write and actually access them…
Yes, no problem.
does it work with Redmond’s software? AND, did the card come with
“Windows Drivers”…
It has drivers, but with XP those are not required.
t neo wrote:
> Andy Sipowicz;1974236 Wrote:
>>> Any ideas how I can fix that?
>> i think the first thing you have to do is prove to yourself that that
>> controller card works…to me it sounds like it is dead…bad dead,
>> not just dead, but killing other stuff DEAD!!
>>
>> when was the last time it worked?Positively not dead. Last time it worked yesterday, with the live CD.
> :)]> tell me you can boot up with a SUSE Live CD with that card installed,
>> and then, mount the connected drives read/write and actually access
>> them…Yes, no problem.>
>> does it work with Redmond’s software? AND, did the card come with
>> “Windows Drivers”…It has drivers, but with XP those are not required.
Please be more careful to separate your answers from the quoted text.
It is possible that your BIOS reorders the disks so that the RAID pair comes
first with the other disk after them when both sets are plugged in. Please run
two tests. Boot the openSUSE Live CD, open a terminal and run the command
‘/sbin/fdisk -l’ for the case with only the disk that works, and with the
controller card in place and all drives plugged.
An alternative is to see if your BIOS allows reordering the disks. My ASUS
M3N78-VM has that capability and I expect that other ASUS BIOSes also have that
capability.
Larry, I’m using the forums, so that way I can build proper quotes if you mean that. I presume (seen the lay-out) that you are not using the forums directly.
My BIOS does allow me to re-arrange boot order of drives. Currently that is set to pick the drive that is on the SATA1 slot and secondly the SATA2 slot (these are the RAID setup drives). With the IDE controller, I verified this setting and it remains that way. No changes there. When I press F8 on my Asus board I get the opportunity to pick any device to boot from, if I pick the RAID device still nothing happens.
I’ll give the fdisk -l a shot later.
I was just thinking: during install and around the overview section the booting area gave a message something like:
“Device mapper may only contain 8 devices. Boot device is out of range.”
Perhaps the BIOS of the IDE controller card is messing things up. That the IDE controller BIOS in some way overrules the BIOS settings for picking the correct drive. On the IRC channel they said that Grub looks at drives kind of the same as the BIOS does. While in the installer I haven’t been able to fix this. I changed boot device order to start at /dev/sda1 (RAID disk 1), changed it again to /dev/hda1 (IDE drive), but that didn’t help me.
To fix this bootloader issue and to fix the “Probing EDD” stall I disabled the drives on the controller, by just disconnecting the drives. The controller is and always has been connected, I would think that openSUSE will recognise that and install appropiate drivers.
Live-CD will not boot unless I add “edd=off” as a boot option. Changing the boot order in the BIOS to the RAID disks gives a blanking cursor in the top left again. I think that it stalls on the EDD probing.
-) Boot live-CD without “edd=off” option fails boot
-) Boot live-CD with option “edd=off” works (same for install)
-) Grub installation is succesfully done on hd0 and hd1 (need to be both for RAID-1)
-) Added “edd=off” to /boot/grub/menu.lst
-) Reboot and start from disk 1 > cursor blinking top left
-) Disconnect IDE controlled drives boots perfectly
On the 160GB drive (/dev/sdd1 in above post) is an old GRUB, but that stalls right after the message “GRUB loading” (or something like that). I don’t know which device this 160GB (IDE controlled) drive is, so I don’t know where to let GRUB install itself.