TVH Posted January 3, 2004 Report Share Posted January 3, 2004 Hello, I've been trying to isntall Mandrake 9.2 to a SATA RAID 0 disk array controlled by VIA 8237. The installer won't detect the disks. I've installed Mandrake 9.2 to a standard IDE disk on my system with no problems but I really need to get it installed on my SATA discs. I also tried to install the 2.6.0 kernel available from the Cooker to the installation that I have in the IDE disk and then copy the partitions to the SATA discs but it didn't work out that way. Actually, Mandrake FAILS TO BOOT if I have the SATA discs enabled in BIOS, even if the discs are perfectly empty and I'm booting up the system from the IDE disk that works if I only disable or unplug the SATA discs! BTW, I can run Microsoft crap on the SATA discs, no problems what so ever... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted January 4, 2004 Report Share Posted January 4, 2004 (edited) I really don't think that 9.2 supports the Via 8237, because of the 2.4.x kernel, but the 2.6.x kernels are supposed to support it, so you could download from the Cooker mirrors the New Year's Eve preview of 10.0, which should install. I will warn you though, that Cooker can be unstable, but there are several expereinced users that are running it right now. Edit: I just re-read your post. I believe you could probably download the drivers and compile them and then copy them to floppy and when the installer says 'Hit F-something to install 3rd party drivers', try that. Edited January 4, 2004 by Steve Scrimpshire Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVH Posted January 4, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 4, 2004 I really don't think that 9.2 supports the Via 8237, because of the 2.4.x kernel, but the 2.6.x kernels are supposed to support it, so you could download from the Cooker mirrors the New Year's Eve preview of 10.0, which should install. I will warn you though, that Cooker can be unstable, but there are several expereinced users that are running it right now. Edit: I just re-read your post. I believe you could probably download the drivers and compile them and then copy them to floppy and when the installer says 'Hit F-something to install 3rd party drivers', try that. Thanks for the reply, I already tried the 10.0 cooker with no luck, it didn't detect my discs. About the driver you were talking about, where can I download it? I downloaded one driver from www.viatech.com but it's only for RH 7.2. That driver is an .img file that should be written to a floppy with rawrite or dd but Mandrake was no able to read the floppy and I was not able to extract the actual driver file from the image. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted January 5, 2004 Report Share Posted January 5, 2004 That was the driver I was referring to. I did not realize that it was a RH driver. It was my understanding that the 2.6 kernel supports the via8237 sata controller. Someone here mentioned it to me, so hopefully they will be able to come along and help you. I could've misunderstood them and maybe it only supports the SATA controller and not raid (but it should). What errors do you get when MDK fails to boot with the SATA enabled or where does it hang? Also, do you have PnP disabled in the BIOS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVH Posted January 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 5, 2004 (edited) I can only see messages on screen if I select Failsafe in the lilo menu, and here's some screenshots :lol: of the boot procedure... Boot hangs here for a while... ...untill finally it goes on... ...to it's final destination that is a Kernel Panic... PS. I have no PnP OS set in BIOS as well as control resorces by manual. Edited January 5, 2004 by TVH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted January 7, 2004 Report Share Posted January 7, 2004 Ok, now I'm down to my best guesses until someone comes along better qualified to suggest something better. It looks to me from your error messages that it is actually seeing your raid, but it is having interrupt conflicts. It's never been really clear to me about the PnP option in the BIOS because of the way some of them are worded. Have you tried reversing your PnP option in the BIOS and trying? (e.g. If you originally say 'No' switch it to 'Yes') It is my understanding that Linux doesn't like the BIOS deciding IRQs for it, so whichever opton allows Linux to do it is the option one should choose, but like I said, it's never been really clear to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linux_learner Posted January 7, 2004 Report Share Posted January 7, 2004 i dont know that much about raid since i have never used it, i was however, able to dig up a howto. its a howto for red hat 7.2, but the principles should be the same http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/ATA-RAID-HOWTO/ researching further, looking for VIA 8237 on google pertaining to linux and raid howto's only revealed to links http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=...G=Google+Search checking the mandrake hardware compatibility list, it does not show the VIA 8237 http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/hardware.php3 obviously it is possible to do raid in linux, but perhaps not with your controller. if it is, it sounds like kernel 2.6 would be the answer. doin a search for drivers proved to be just as difficult http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr=&ie=I...G=Google+Search after going to viatech.com i found the specific controler (vt8237) and ran some searches on that http://www.google.com/linux?hl=en&lr=&ie=I...G=Google+Search the viatech page i got the information from was http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=297 ok, so maybe i havent told you how to fix the problem, but hopefully i've given enough documentaion to point you (or some one else) in the right direction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted January 7, 2004 Report Share Posted January 7, 2004 From those links I've come up with this: http://archives.mandrakelinux.com/cooker-a...11/msg00179.php which doesn't look promising at the moment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVH Posted January 8, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2004 Ok, After I disabled APIC in BIOS, I get no more lost interrupts! Now the problem is that I can't boot because my installation is on the IDE disk that normally is HDA (IDE primary master). If I enable my SATA discs, Linux assign them as HDA and HDC, SATA primary master and SATA secondary master and my IDE disk becomes HDE. I can choose to boot from the IDE disk in BIOS and it loads lilo fine. It detects my hardware ok, the only problem is that since lilo.conf refers to HDA, it can't boot cuz the actual linux partitions are now in HDE! I tried to add one more selection to the lilo menu that points to HDE, but when I run lilo (in console after making chages to lilo.conf) I get an error that tells there's no such partition and there's no such selection available in the actual boot menu! BTW, the Cooker 10.0 (31.12.2003) installer works on kernel 2.4.22 right?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted January 8, 2004 Report Share Posted January 8, 2004 AFAIK, the Cooker 31.12.2003 snapshot is using 2.6.0-0.5mdk, which should work with your configuration now that Linux sees the SATA drives and do a reinstall. Have you tried editing /etc/fstab to point the new /dev/hdX numbers to the proper mountpoints? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVH Posted January 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2004 AFAIK, the Cooker 31.12.2003 snapshot is using 2.6.0-0.5mdk, which should work with your configuration now that Linux sees the SATA drives and do a reinstall. Have you tried editing /etc/fstab to point the new /dev/hdX numbers to the proper mountpoints? Yes, the 3112 cooker 10.0 is 2.6.0 but the installer is still running on 2.4.22!! That's why it won't detect my discs any better than the 9.2 installer. :unsure: I'll try editing etc/fstab later on today B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVH Posted January 10, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 10, 2004 I've now added /dev/hde6 to fstab.conf. I can begin booting now if I type root=/dev/hde6 statement in the lilo boot menu. Now it boots half-way up, but I can't get past fsck... Here's a screenie of the situtation. what to do now? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TVH Posted January 12, 2004 Author Report Share Posted January 12, 2004 I figured this one out...all I had to do was add a file named /fastboot and the next time the system is booted it will skip the disk tests. About the RAID thing, there really seems to be only one option: Wait for the new drivers. Kernel 2.6.0 supports VIA 8237 SATA but not RAID. Now I just tear down my nice and fast RAID 0 setup and try to be comortable with 2 independent discs. At least I can get rid of the _noisy_ IDE disc (Maxtor 7200rpm non-fluid bearing ) B) Many thanks to everyone who helped me here! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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