ok, I got 12.2 to install on my rmraid (nvidia) system, after setting up raid10 via bios. So I have four 1TB drives stripe/mirror which nets a single 2TB drive.
I let openSuse use all the default settings during install. Once complete, when I went to look at the filesystem via GUI (within KDE, not bash shell) – it showed me this:
/home…2TB
drive blah-blah-blah1…2TB
drive blah-blah-blah2…2TB
Sorry for the blahs but I’m re-installing everything right now and don’t have the details in front of me. But it definitely showed me a 2TB home folder and two separate 2TB drives. As an experiment I put a folder in one of the driver, figuring if we are in RAID mirror mode maybe it would show up in the other and nothing to worry about. But it didn’t.
So next I tried putting a folder in the /home directory and figured ok maybe that’s the virtual view of the RAID array and that folder will show up in the two other 2TB drive. Nope.
It’s like openSuse is ignoring the BIOS raid settings and it is giving me access to the two sets of paired drives, separately.
Did I do something wrong? I really want this to work and I want a single 2TB drive that “under the covers” is mirrored for backup protection. Any clues would be appreciated.
We need the output of fdisk -l, not what you typed out.
fdisk -l
Yeah I know, sorry. Soon as reinstall is done I will check.
During this install I deselected automatic config which allowed me to play with the partition config. I noticed that there were three drive devices available:
nvidia_ceccec 2TB
nvidia_ceccec0 2TB
nvidia_ceccec1 2TB
it also showed my four sata 1TB drives. I told it to delete one of the sata drives and it warned my that nvidia_ceccec0 would be deleted. As I tried that, stepping through each drive, this logical to physical mapping became apparent:
nvidia ceccec0 2TB : sata1, sata2
nvidia ceccec1 2TB : sata3, sata4
so I assumed that nvidia_ceccec is just a logical representation of the mirror of ceccec0 and ceccec1, together. Is that correct?
I told it just install on that drive. The partition plan then showed me that drive, plus a swap, boot, and home partition.
Let’s see what happens but unless I really misunderstand this, it seems to make sense.
Typically it would show a sata drive as sdXY where X is the drive (1st, 2nd, and so on) and where Y would be the partition number. So sda1 would be the 1st sata drive and the first partition.
Thanks. Totally lost now. I have reinstalled 5 times tonight, can’t get it to work, machine won’t boot just sits there blank black screen with the word GRUB.
my goal was to have a raid10 box running opensuse with four 1TB drives in the array. I just can’t get it to work. One more try now eliminating the bios raid and using Linux raid instead. I have a feeling this will also be a failure.
i really hope I can switch to windows on this machine and get all my data off a USB ext3 drive, otherwise I am totally screwed.
very stressful and disappointing experience after five years with this little file server in my basement. Why I went down this path of “upgrading” to 12.x - huge mistake 
1 you did not backup first…really?
2 Software RAID should work fine but Windows won’t recognize it. So don’t expect to get data off a Linux system with Windows.
3 FAKE RAID IS not a good solution since it may require proprietary drivers. Hardware RAID is transparent to the OS so it just works. Software RAID is OK but is can not be used in Linux/Windows environment.
Yeah, backup is on an external USB drive, formatted with ext3.
So I either have to get this opensuse to work or see if I can get win7 to read that backup drive.
If you think going to a HW raid card will solve this I will order one tomorrow. I am afraid, however, of buying a card then finding out it won’t work with opensuse for some reason.
Example: https://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/hardware/470999-how-add-raid-card-12-1-a.html
Real hardware card is transparent to the OS the array looks like a single drive. But in any case I’d check before purchase with a real human sales person and get a return guarantee. Note the real Hardware cards are expensive the cheap ones are just FAKE on a card
This one looks promising. I can call them but will probably wait until Monday and call adaptec to be sure. The description says suse Linux…so maybe it’s true…
Adaptec RAID 2405 2260100-R SATA/SAS 4 internal ports w/ 128MB cache memory Controller Card, Kit - Newegg.com
if throwing more money at this will get 12.2 or 12.3 to install…then awesome…too much stress and wasted time already…
thanks for listening.
If you can access installed filesystems from live media, installation logs may shed light on what happened.
On 2013-06-01 04:56, gogalthorp wrote:
>
> 1 you did not backup first…really?
>
> 2 Software RAID should work fine but Windows won’t recognize it. So
> don’t expect to get data off a Linux system with Windows.
The contrary is also true: Windows also has a software raid system, which Linux will not read.
> 3 FAKE RAID IS not a good solution since it may require proprietary
> drivers. Hardware RAID is transparent to the OS so it just works.
> Software RAID is OK but is can not be used in Linux/Windows environment.
I’d like to stress the point about fake raid.
Most motherboard raid are fake raid. Perhaps all. What does it means? That the processing is done
all by the host CPU, and it needs a driver from the manufacturer, even in Windows. The bios support
is only capable of reading from it in order to boot the machine, that’s all. More complex things,
like writing, need the CPU and driver.
Some of them work in Linux, maybe with a driver from the manufacturer, or because the thing has been
reverse engineered and included in the kernel. I have no personal experience with this (my machine
has fake raid and I don’t enable it, I refuse).
On the other hand, I never use automatic installation of any system.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from oS 12.3 “Dartmouth” GM (rescate 1))
And how does it differ from using software RAID? You need CPU and driver there as well.
The primary advantage of using fake RAID on legacy BIOS system is having single drive at boot time - so no issues with how to setup bootloader to allow booting from multiple devices. It even can boot from RAID0/RAID5 in this case which is not possible using software RAID. And when OS boots, it is just the same DM or Linux MD with a bit of candy on top.
Downside was already mentioned - proprietary formats that had to be reverse engineered and so never fully supported.
On 2013-06-03 07:16, arvidjaar wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2562125 Wrote:
>>
>> More complex things,
>> like writing, need the CPU and driver.
>
> And how does it differ from using software RAID? You need CPU and
> driver there as well.
No, no driver with software raid, not from the manufacturer, that is. It is a kernel layer placed
over the hard disk kernel layer.
The difference with fake raid is that the BIOS can read from it and boot the system without any
driver assistance.
> The primary advantage of using fake RAID on legacy BIOS system is
> having single drive at boot time - so no issues with how to setup
> bootloader to allow booting from multiple devices. It even can boot from
> RAID0/RAID5 in this case which is not possible using software RAID. And
> when OS boots, it is just the same DM or Linux MD with a bit of candy on
> top.
Just about what I said 
> Downside was already mentioned - proprietary formats that had to be
> reverse engineered and so never fully supported.
Right.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from oS 12.3 “Dartmouth” GM (rescate 1))
Well, the adaptec 2405 raid controller was exactly the right solution to this. I am very impressed with Adaptec; their online user manual reads like a tutorial on RAID technology, and it is very clear regarding how to set the card up and configure it. The only complaint I have is they didn’t point out where the (+) post was on the card for the computer case HDD LED, but an educated guess and I got it right.
The card “bios” (really, an application) at boot time is perfect, not overly complex and it made configuring my RAID10 array very easy.
Their customer service got back to me right away pre-purchase and told me where to get the drivers for openSUSE – but when I installed openSUSE version 12.3 I didn’t even use them, the OS was happy with the view it had of the single 2TB drive as presented by the RAID controller.
So, I’m a little disappointed that to get the “free” Linux operating system to work on a vintage 2010 computer I had to spend $200, but glad I finally have a system that works.
Now I’d like to receive a text message on my cell phone if my RAID array degrades or a drive fails. I hope there is an easy way to set that up…
You may need those Linux drivers.
Don’t think it is needed to operate but may be for interfacing the hardware control to the OS
On 2013-06-05 17:16, chuckcintron wrote:
> So, I’m a little disappointed that to get the “free” Linux operating
> system to work on a vintage 2010 computer I had to spend $200, but glad
> I finally have a system that works.
Linux software has the habit of exposing fake hardware. You get what you
paid for initially: A fake. A fraud.
Win-printers, win-modems, win-raid-motherboards… Now you know. Next
time don’t buy them, or buy them knowing the problems.
You could simply have used Linux software raid at zero cost, and same
service as the fake one - for Linux only.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.1 x86_64 “Asparagus” at Telcontar)
I have no idea what a “win-raid-motherboard” is, other than some sort of pejorative comment made by by people who don’t really understand computer architecture.
I really believe that this lack of handling an RMRAID array as presented by the motherboard RAID controller via BIOS is a failing of Linux – not that there is some “windows” DNA in my system that predestined it to be “exposed” by the unblinking eye of some Linux god.
Case in point: I have been a happy Linux user for years on an older version of openSUSE (it was so stable I don’t even remember what version it was – 9.x or 10.x). This very computer, even an older motherboard I had in it back then, BIOS RAID – and it worked fine.
12.2 of openSUSE recognized the array and installed fine, but I couldn’t get it to boot consistently.
12.3 of openSUSE looked at the array and decided it would rather not even deal with it…no way to even install the OS.
I wish I could have gotten openSUSE to install using a total Linux RAID config, but after hours of searching and trying several experiments getting Linux to construct the RAID10 array during the install process, I could not get it. Maybe because I’m dumb, but trust me I did try. Over a two day period I am not kidding I installed this OS at least 15 times.
So my perception after all of this is not that Linux weeds out weak hardware, it’s that Linux itself is fragile. I know most of you will disagree with this but I’m the customer and this is my feeling after this week long ordeal of trying to get an operating system installed on a fairly typical computer configuration.
On 2013-06-06 15:16, chuckcintron wrote:
>
> I have no idea what a “win-raid-motherboard” is, other than some sort of
> pejorative comment made by by people who don’t really understand
> computer architecture.
>
> I really believe that this lack of handling an RMRAID array as
> presented by the motherboard RAID controller via BIOS is a failing of
> Linux – not that there is some “windows” DNA in my system that
> predestined it to be “exposed” by the unblinking eye of some Linux god.
You should instruct yourself better. 
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from oS 12.3 “Dartmouth” GM (rescate 1))
Help me out - please explain what a “windows motherboard” is.
Seriously, after 25 years as a microprocessor designer I am very interested to learn this new information.