-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Has anybody here ever tried to setup multiple RAID devices on a single RAID controller? A good example is a box with an Adaptec I2O card with 5 drives in the machine in RAID array 0, then an external box with an additional 7 drives that are in another RAID array (RAID array 1).
On a Mandrake 8.2 box with only RAID array 0, it boots up just fine. If we plug in the external drive box, lilo dies after about 2 dots worth of loading. Interestingly, "dies" is not the correct term. Instead, it restarts lilo. Weird. Booted into rescue mode with the external drive box connected and I could see the partition as /dev/sdb1. Oddly, I got a bus error if I tried to look at the partition of /dev/sda1. Now here's the fun part. Installed a second Adaptec I2O card and connected only the external drive box so that RAID array 0 is connected to RAID controller 0 and RAID array 1 is connected to RAID controller 1. It boots up and runs just fine. My hardware guy felt that the Northbridge was being "overloaded". I dunno about that, but this I do know: it definitely is in the hardware and not Linux, because when the error occurs with lilo, it has not yet gotten to the part where it's started running Linux yet. An even stranger twist, this same external drive box works just fine when connected to a different machine with the same Adaptec I2O controller but only 3 drives as the RAID array 0. The system boots up just fine in that configuration. Has anybody else: 1) Ever attempted anything like this? 2) Ever seen this? 3) Got a reasonable explanation for this? No need to say "the motherboard of the first system". That's a no brainer. What I want to know is _why_! Blue skies... Todd - -- | MandrakeSoft USA | Security is like an onion. It's made | | http://www.mandrakesoft.com | made up of several layers and makes | | http://www.mandrakelinux.com | you cry. --Howard Chu | Mandrake Cooker Devel Version, Kernel 2.4.21pre4-10mdk -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+Xp3Clp7v05cW2woRAjccAJ42KmAeYZeCww1cXYpa9baS3quUjwCfcrj7 j/vxQk0FoVCoXsrs5xi90kI= =LZ8m -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com