Greg Freemyer wrote: > Richard, (I'm top posting intentionally). > > I'm confused, you said previously you were never going to run windows > on the box, so why are you researching the windows / linux > compatibility dm-raid driver? > It has nothing to do with Windoze. It has to do with the fact that I want to use the 4 drive RAID5 hardware (fake-raid) drive as my system drive which would act as a large drive containing MBR, /boot, /, /home, /var, /everythingelse amounting to 1.09TB utilizing the 4x400G SATA drives (which is all the MB can directly control). In order to get *something* up, I salvaged an old 120G IDE drive because the MB has an IDE controller also and put the CDRom and 1IDE HD as a (hopefully temporary) bootable system. It is looking like I can't use the MB fake-raid drive array as a boot device under SUSE even though I could if I were to degrade the system and use Windoze. I would rather throw the system in to the trash than to use M$ products, so I will use the 5th drive unless I can find a way to boot from the 4 drive hardware fake-raid array. If I am ever successful, I will deploy the configuration, if not, it isn't yet quite economical to require 5 drives when 4 *should* do the job (and would if I didn't hate M$ so much).
> ie. > md-raid - native linux software raid. Does not support fake-raid > bios, but talks directly to the drives. Raid setup is maintained in a > linux generic way. Lots of users so it is easy to get answers and > Howto info. > I have not been able to find how to do this DURING INSTALLATION. I can create the software array but I am warned that it will NOT be bootable nor can a MBR be created nor can a swap partition be created because until the boot is complete, the software array is not available/stable. That is the warning message I get (and heed). I can install to a 5th drive and create the array, but this is a 5 drive solution to a 4 drive problem. > dm-raid - linux fake-raid driver. Reads raid config info from the > controller bios. Because every fake-raid controller has a seperate > api, it has specialized api modules for each controller type. Since > it is in no way generic, it has lots more code and is much less well > tested than md-raid. Also, you will find it harder to ask questions > and get reliable answers. > If a driver exists and can be loaded at boot time, then the fake-raid controller solution is the right way to go in this case. There are drives available for several (Adaptec comes to mind) controllers I have seen that can be loaded during installation. I am hoping a suitable driver exists for this ASUS board. > To the best of my knowledge, md-raid is highly preferred unless you > need to be able to dual boot your machine. In the case of a dual > boot, windows uses the controller bios to setup the raid, so you need > dm-raid to ensure linux sees the same raid array the windows does. > > I believe md-raid is supported directly during opensuse 10.2 install, > so if you go that way you don't have any research / work to do. Just > use it. > <snip> Any ideas on how to use the 'fake-raid' during the install AS A BOOT DEVICE would be appreciated. As I stated, I can't see how to use it as the root device or boot device, only as a data device. Thanks, Richard -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
