kjv1611

Just wanted to supply an update/FYI for my progress/situation at this time:

I have enjoyed my learnings in Linux, and have really liked Mandriva so far.

However, because I frankly cannot willingly put enough trust in Linux and my understanding of it together for now, I am going to give up on this project for now. I've worked on this whole project for many months now, with just one obstacle after another. I have much more important things to be working on, so I just really don't have the time.

Eventually, what I want to do at this point is to use a virtual pc istance and/or a spare computer of old parts for a Linux box for learning. Then maybe one day I'll learn enough to be comfortable enough to setup a whole server in Linux.

Besides, since most of my computing time has been on Windows machines, it's REALLY hard for me to get away from all the automatic features, such as recognizing new hardware - USB drives, and such, and not having to type a bunch of different commands just to get something to work. Windows just works, so I'm going to stick with Windows for now as my server OS, at least. I'm trying Windows Home Server right now - well, sort of in the middle of that. I've read great things about it. I don't have the time to spend full time hours just working on my own personal server at home - I've got a full time job, a family, and I am very involved with my church (handle the bulk of the audio ministry for our church, I designed, and do the maintenance for our church website, and try to help in other areas). With all of that, I simply cannot devote anymore time to my Linux project unfortunately.

One day.... one day, it'll happen. :D

Thanks for that info! I've got some more detailed info in another forum suggesting the same thing.

Gparted showed all negatives for the RAID 3 setup last night. And according to what I read in some other online forums, it looks like Gparted has some sort of memory stack overflow or something happening causing the negative numbers to show up. Hopefully I can use fdisk to get the job done. We shall see. If possible, I'll try it late this afternoon, or else this evening after 9pm or so.. (EDT)

From what I'm being told in another forum, it's not Mandriva with the 1TB limit, but possibly DiskDrake. I'm trying to get gparted up and running so I can use that, and see if it works instead..

Did some more tinkering last night, and didn't have time to actually install it, but I changed the configuration of the RAID card for now. I set it to 2 arrays - one RAID 3, one RAID 1 - giving a total of 1.5 TB, 1 TB RAID 3, and 500GB RAID 1.

Mandriva does appear to be limited to 1TB total capacity. So, I may just stick with Mandriva for now, and use the 1TB and 500GB, hoping that in another year they'll support more than 1TB.

Okay, I've tried everything I know. Ubuntu 7.04 Server Ed saw the RAID 3 100% correctly when I looked through that one again.

I tried even reformatting the hard drives with Windows XP, and it recongized everything correctly as well.

But when I started installing Mandriva, it still shows the 2 TB as just 1 TB. I have no clue what it is, and it doesn't appear that anyone around here does - so far.

So, for now, I'm going to try the Ubuntu 7.04 GUI/Desktop edition, and if it sees the RAID 3 correctly, I'll just go with it for now. If not, I'll go back to the Ubuntu Server Ed.

If anyone ends up finding anything in the mean time, or thinking of something that would correct the issue, let me know.

Thanks.

Another fast update before I head out the door for a while. Hopefully can come back and get this all figured out.

Ubuntu 7.04 desktop didn't seem to recognize the RAID 3 correctly either.

However, Ubuntu 7.04 server did.

So, it is apparently something with the software, not the hardware after all. I think I may try that one again, and redo the raid config for the system (b/c the BIOS RAID didn't work correctly with it... oh boy..)

Any other suggestions on getting Mandriva to recoginze everything correctly would be greatly appreciated! :)

Okay, something has GOT to give. Is there some limit within Mandriva of 1 TB or somethign? Even though the RAID BIOS shows 2 tb (exactly 1,850GB or something like that), but it's still only showing 1 TB in the partitioning part of Mandriva setup after I reinstalled!!

Surely there is SOMETHING I can do to fix this!?

Interrupt thing apparently has nothing to do with it - it's now still just showing 1TB, not 2... going to reboot again and see what he deal is...

scratching my head, really, now on this one...

Weird... with interrupt 3 enabled, it showed 1TB on hdc, and no hdd - but ONLY 1 TB, not 2??? Trying to change the interrupt 3 part next...

Another update... reworking with the RAID BIOS - it seems the problem of it not showing up was within the RAID card, b/c it reconfigured it , and apparently it tried to automatically recreate a RAID 0 of just one drive, and whatever else... so maybe it'll show up with the Interupt 3 enabled... booting Mandriva now, will post back to state whether this works, or whether it has to do with the interrrupt being enabled/disabled - I had to have it enabled on the last system (Windows XP)..

Okay, I tried to somehow separate the drives - impossible with this RAID card, unfortunately - it will support up to 2 separate RAID ARRAYS.

But, I did try reconfiguring the setup (basically it will wipe everything from all the drives, and also deleted everything and redid the RAID 3.

Basically, the way the netcell stuff is setup, it wil automatically asign the RAID according to how many drives you include - 5 disks is an automatic RAID 3.

One day in the future, maybe I'll get a different motherboard/cpu setup that has an onboard RAID and do a RAID 5 or 10 or something. :)

Now, I looked, and nothing is showing from it... Got to go and try another option (the RAID card has the option of turning something on and off - something interrupt. I'll go and turn it back off again, and see if it shows again... and maybe, hopefully not, I'll end up having to reinstall Mandrake to get it to recognize it correctly again...

Okay, I pulled up the user manual first. It doesn't support JBOD... I"ll do some more checking to see if I can somehow work around it..

Another note I've noticed as well - as somehow why it's noticing the RAID ARRAY as 2 separate drives.

I can see this detail under the Boot loader configuration tool:

It shows for possible boot devices:

/dev/hdc (Netcell Revolution SR5000 R3-5)

/dev/hdd (Netcell Revolution SR5000 R0-1)

/dev/mapper/nvidia_eafgfgbf

/dev/mapper/nvidia_eafgfgbf1

/dev/mapper/nvidia_eafgfgf5

/dev/mapper/nvidia_eafgfgbf6

Now the last 4 somehow related to the RAID 1 ARRAY which is where the system is installed, and where I put the 3 (I guess standard) different partitions.

The first 2 are actually for the same item, but listed as 2 separate. Any ideas why one shows R3-5 and one shows R0-1? Could it possibly be that previously one of the 5 drives was an individual drive (when I only had 4 installed on that card)? If so, is there any way to format/flush the old information causing this?

I guess I could use Ubuntu Live CD to try and format it and see if that fixes it... any thoughts?

If you didn't partition it, then it won't mount or do anything. What you would need to do is go into System/Configuration/Configure Your Computer, and then go into partitioning in here, and partition the 2TB of disk. You will need a mount point, maybe something like /data for the 2TB or something, and then you can have it mounted here each time you boot your system and get access to it.

That is where I've been going the whole time, and trying to mount the 2 TB of storage. However, it has it split into 2 separate sections:

hdc = 1 TB available

hdc = 465GB available

Where it should just show as one disk with 2 TB available.

Update: this may help understanding the issue (it IS showing the same in setup after all - weird, I coulda sworn that it didn't...)

In the partitioning tool, it is showing 1 TB under hdc

and 465GB under hdd.

Any ideas with this info?

Thanks for the info. That is great to know, because this Mandriva thing is just AWESOME so far! If I can get the disk partitioning thing fixed, I think I may have found computer heaven! :)

Actually, I'm going to try reinstalling, and taking care of all of the partitions right up front, and see if that does any better.

Any other ideas on the partitions issue, please let me know. I'll try to post back with my progress.. it may be tomorrow.

I have a PNY S-CURE PCI SATA RAID Card with 5 500 GB WD SATA2 Hard drives attached.

During setup, Mandriva saw it correctly as 2 TB total capacity, and it also saw a partition of 465GB (which was part of the 2TB from before - it used to be a separate drive from the RAID 3 ARRAY.

I did not partition that ARRAY during setup, so there are no partitions showing available under the Mandriva Linux Control Center Partitions editor - I forget what it is actually called, but it isn't showing a separate name onscreen right now.

So, why is my 2TB RAID showing as 2 separate drives/arrays?, and only a total of 1.5 TB?

Is there some way I can correct this within Mandriva, or does it have to be reinstalled?

And an associated question about this: I downloaded the big DVD of Mandriva Spring 2007 Free and used that. Is that whole thing free, or is some/all of it trial ware? I did not have to enter any information before downloading the ISO image.

Also, it did have an icon on the desktop "Buy it now", but I deleted it. Is this thing going to run for a month or a few months, and then just quit working if I don't buy it?

Any information greatly appreciated. I've done very little in Linux to date. Mandriva seemed awesome so far, I just hope it stays that way!