I’ve just successfully installed Opensuse 11 on two WD raptor drives on Intel ICH9R Raid0 (BIOS raid or DMraid). The installation was not straightforward. Thanks to many sources of information on other forums, I’ve managed to simplify the steps.
The main problem is the installation will fail at the end when it tries to install Grub because it can’t find the correct partition to install itself to.
The easiest way to install Opensuse 11 in this case is to use the LiveCD as it lets you open a terminal and make changes to Grub.
here are the steps:
boot from LiveCD, and run the setup using the desktop icon.
On the partition setup section. You can let the installer figure out the partition setup or you can setup your own. It will recognize the Raid setup as DMraid. Take note of the partition names, e.g. isw_dfkdjkddf_OSdrive_part1, in my case, part5 was the /boot
Go on the next steps until Grub error appears at the end.
Click ok on the error msg dialog and click “yes” when it asks if you want to retry setting up Grub
Now open a terminal window, type
ls /dev/mapper
, you should see something like isw_hdjhjernmd_OSdrive_part#. The newly installed OS11 should still be mounted in /mnt.
6) type
vi /mnt/boot/grub/device.map
, this file helps Grub find the appropriate partition, if you see “(hd0) /dev/sda”, that means Grub will look for sda for boot partition, change “/dev/sda” to “/dev/mapper/isw_hdjhjernmd_OSdrive”. (hd0,4) means the 5th partition. In my case, I have to map it to /dev/mapper/isw_hdjhjernmd_OSdrive_part5, since that is where my /boot partition is located.
7)Save the changes using “:wq” in vi editor, go back to the installation window, and retry Grub installation, it should go smoothly this time and you can reboot with new OS11 installed!
Thanks for those instructions, I am desperately trying to get opensuse 11 also installed on my raid set up. I am having a problem however, when following you steps, when I get to editing the “device.map” file there are not entries (the filesis there but its blank). I make an entry based on my boot partition which was “part1”, so my entry map looks like:
(hd0) /dev/mapper/isw_hdjhjernmd_OSdrive_part1
I guess my question is, is something wrong since there are no entries in the device.map file. Cause when I restart the Grub install, it keeps erroring out. And when I go back into the device.map but the file its blank again, so I guess the install is overriding my previously entry with a new blank device.map file. Is there another file I should edit or am I not making the correct mapping. I have also tried (hd0,4).
Again my boot partition is “part1” so I assumeing (hd0) is the correct map but since the file is blank and overrideen every retry I’m not sure whats going on. Thanks for your help