I’m having some (well, a lot actually) of problems trying to get OpenSUSE 11.2 installed on my home PC. I am attempting to set up a dual boot configuration with Windows 7 installed on an bios Nvidia RAID 0.
I was able to shrink the partition in Windows, and rebooted onto the net install for OpenSUSE (the MD5 validated DVD install failed multiple burns with “Repository not found”).
I get into the graphical installer portion with no problems off the net install CD. However, the installer is not recognizing that there is an existing RAID 0. It lists the 2 SATA disks in the RAID separately. I can click on SDA1, and both SDB and SDB1 and it shows the disks, but does not recognize any existing partitions. If I click on SDA I get an immediate segfault in YaST and drop back to the text mode installer menu. It is loading the nv_sata module just fine.
Am I missing a step? From forum searches and google it seems that this is not usually a problem. My motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 with the Nvidia Nforce 570 chipset running an AMD X2 64 3800+.
Removing the stripeset and redoing it as Linux software RAID is not an option, I do not have enough space for a total backup/restore. Anything I do has to be nondestructive to the existing Windows installation.
Any help is greatly appreciated, I really want to have a linux installation but between the DVD installer failing and now this issue I am about ready to give up on it.
I know it’s called fakeraid, and trust me, I’ve noticed that Suse doesn’t like it.
Since posting this I have attempted to force RAID detection at the command prompt: as root, ran dmraid -ay. This returned the error “No raid disks”. Is it perhaps that it is loading sata_nv instead of AHCI drivers for the sata disks? Perhaps I need to pass a kernel argument like dodmraid?
So far I have not seen anyone that got this to work. I would love to be shown wrong though. If you get it to work please tell all here how. If anyone else has got it working please jump in.
@iueras you should really be looking at a backup solution for your
RAID, whatever OS you using. The issue I see with your setup is if the
controller fails you will loose your RAID. I have a RAID controller on
my motherboard, but I only use a JBOD for my data drive, which is
backed up to a RAIDed NAS (Which in turn is backed up).
If you run a RAID system your better off to use each drive on a
separate controller if you can (This motherboard has two (2x2disks),
plus the RAID controller (1x4disks)), then your covered for a hardware
failure as well as a drive failure.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.27.45-0.1-default
up 8 days 22:34, 3 users, load average: 0.06, 0.10, 0.09
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - CUDA Driver Version: 190.53
RAID 0 is worse because it is not a mirror it is stripped which increases bandwidth some but spreads your data over two drives, lose either drive and all data is gone. RAID 1 is mirrored and gives some small amount of extra uptime or servers and such, but is not a real backup solution . You really need to backup if the data is important.
Thanks for the concern about the RAID levels, but I did know what I was getting into when I set up a stripeset. I was more concerned about speed than data redundancy. I keep most of my data on a separate 1TB drive. The stripeset is for my operating systems for speed when loading, and a few select applications that benefit from the increased transfer rates. Most applications are installed on the TB drive along with my data.
I’ll keep hacking at it, but at this point it is not looking good. I may just go ahead and shrink the 1TB partition and install OpenSUSE on that drive instead. I do have a few more ideas before I go that route however, and I will post if I manage to get it going.
It isn’t working for me as well. But there is a driver on the MB-CD for linux. (ASUS SLI-DELUXE) I have a special one for suse. I have about the same chipset.
Unfortunately, I feared the above and didn’t want to believe it but I reached the same conclusion after many hours spent trying diverse methods on my old ASUS A8V Deluxe, 1GB RAM, AMD ATHLON 64 X2 4400+.
This MB has a Promise FastTrak 378 and the VIA VT8237. I used both in various RAID configurations, with several different openSUSE versions, starting from SUSE 10.0 up to openSUSE 11.0 (all of them x64 as well as all versions in my discussion below).
I am now trying to revive the PC and make it a server (internet proxy and content management for the kids, file and multimedia server for the home network, etc). So, I got 2 x 2Tb WD HDDs (RAID1)together with some old 2 x 250Gb WD HDD (RAID0)and a 60Gb Maxtor (single UDMA).
Since I hope to put this together once and not touch it for a couple of years, I wanted to get a head start with openSUSE 11.3 (milestone 7) so I don’t run out of updates too soon. Also, I want to use FakeRaid so besides safety(1) or speed(0), the Acronis TI boot disk understands the partitions and can backup/restore.
Well, openSUSE 11.3 install fails miserably - 1st time ever I can’t install openSUSE at all! Tried both DVD and LiveCD KDE and it can’t even format any partition, in any combination using dmraid, regardless if RAID 0 or 1. I tried some workarounds for partitioning and formatting (see below) but 11.3 can’t mount the partitions already prepared.
Went back to 11.2 and there are problems with the partitioning during DVD install. However, the LiveCD KDE4 has some success, even though it occasionally freezes during the formatting.
On 11.2 & 11.3 I tried both EXT3 & EXT4 but it doesn’t seem to make a difference.
Tried 11.1 and it only froze once out of quite a few partitioning/formatting attempts.
I also tried some other distributions with mixed results:
Mandriva PWP 2010 - works fine 1st try, no problems.
Ubuntu Server 10.04 - doesn’t even access the partitions to format or mount (diverse errors).
CentOS 5.5 - no problem whatsoever.
I am still determined to use openSUSE (as on my other 3 systems) and after multiple trials and errors, I came up with a rough plan that seems to work on 11.2, for the most part:
Boot with a LiveCD
Check dmraid status #dmraid -r -this should list the correct array name and number of drives (i used a MHDD disk to clear boot info and erase 1st 100MB when had conflicting dmraid info caused by moving HDD around; #dmraid -rE didn’t work all the time).
Make sure to assign correct partition types (83 Linux; 82 Swap)
Reboot for good measure (had problems with system “confused” on how many partitions)
Open YaST2 / Partitioner and format all partitions. Try one at the time to prevent partitioner from locking up.
Once all partitions formatted, start the install script (from the desktop).
During install, select expert partitioning but don’t format or change type. Just assign mount points.
Make sure the boot order is recognized correctly by Grub (changed order in BIOS if not) and select MBR for location (didn’t try the default booting from partition, might still work)
Continue normal installation. The system should install correctly, even with multiple dmraid partitions.
I hope this helps someone.
I am very frustrated with this situation. Regardless if is the kernel fault, or dmraid, or YaST partitioner module fault, this should not happen!
The main reason I switched to Linux is Vista didn’t support my relatively older hardware but Linux did.
One shouldn’t have to trade system functionality for “new features”. Don’t want to keep buying new hardware just to keep up with the OS updates!
Quick update:
1 - Installed latest BIOS update from ASUS (even though “beta”). The revision description says nothing about storage but I wanted latest possible.
2 - Switched PNP OS in BIOS to “No”.
After “1” & “2” was able to install openSUSE 11.2 straightforward, twice - no workaround needed.
Recently, I got the final release DVD for 11.3 x86_64 and installed OK using the existing partitions (format only). This worked fine with both RAID 0 and RAID 1 partitions.
Since I didn’t test all the combinations possible I can’t say what is the fix but I lean towards “2” above. I guess enabling PNP OS in BIOS causes the OS to mis-configure resources.
