Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
Drew Tomlinson wrote: On 12/10/2005 1:17 PM Stroller wrote: On Dec 10, 2005, at 5:08 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a system on an Abit motherboard with the Nvidia GeForce 4 chipset. There are two SATA disks in a hardward stripe configuration using the controller built in to the motherboard. ... I booted the latest Knoppix dated 9/23/05 and see two icons on the desktop for my drives. One for sda the other for sdb. I can not mount either. I assume this is because Knoppix is seeing each drive individually instead of the one logical striped drive it is. I'm no expert on this, but I believe that many ATA "hardware" RAID arrangements in fact just use their Windoze drivers to do software RAID. I'd do some research via Googling the chipset &/or board's model number if I were you. I haven't found anything yet but then I haven't looked real hard. However I suspect this does not rely on any Windows drivers as the controller is managed long before Windows boots. Just after POST and before the OS starts, a brief message showing the controller is displayed. By pressing F10, I can manage my stripe. Much like I see most SCSI cards. Stroller is right on this one. Most built-in motherboard 'RAID chips' and inexpensive RAID cards are simply software RAID with a BIOS front end that can be used to create/manage RAID volumes composed of attached disks. The firmware for these RAID chips/cards simply scans each disk for its proprietery RAID metadata, and presents any found volumes as a drive to the BIOS. They also often detect problems with the arrays (missing components, etc) and present the user with boot time options to deal with these situations (boot in degraded mode, replace missing component and sync, etc). But the actual block-by-block RAID operations (writing mirror blocks, computing/reading/writing parity data, degraded operation, etc) are done in a device driver under the OS, once booted. The CPU is doing all the RAID heavy lifting with these arrangements. I see these sorts of RAID solutions as merely glorified IDE or SATA controllers with some advanced firmware in front of them. True hardware RAID do these block-by-block operations on a dedicated controller, often with some sort of NVRAM write-behind/read-ahead cache between the OS and the volume, which can survive sudden power loss/crashes, etc. The RAID volumes presented to the boot time environment and OS look like regular drives. The RAID controller hardware does the RAID heavy-lifting (parity computation, re-syncs, etc), offloading them from the CPU. Obviously these hardware RAID solutions are more sophisticated than the cheap software RAID arrangements, which is why presently, you won't find one for less than about $400 (USD), where you can find the software RAID cards for < $100 (USD). Both types seem to present a similar user interface to the user, which is cause for confusion. Also, the vendors of the cheap RAID solutions don't go out of their way to inform the customers of the differences between their stuff and the hardware RAID solutions, of course, which is more cause for confusion. :-) Is there some magic I can perform at the boot prompt to get Knoppix to see the two individual drives as one logical striped drive? I can't recover the data from booting Windows because it's all screwed up and reboots itself shortly after logon. If my guess is correct then the best thing might be to install Windows on a spare drive & boot from that to see the RAID as one. You might try booting with a Windows CD & see if the RAID is recognised as a single partition... if you get the option to do a repair install you _should_ be able to get an at-least-mostly-working Windows install & all your data intact. Recover the data to a portable drive & format. Thanks. I tried an overlay install again and things seem to be going well. Copying data now. Thanks for your ideas! Drew As mentioned by another poster in this thread, there is also the somewhat too generically named 'dmraid'. (When I first stumbled across this, I thought it was some LVM2 native replacement for the good 'ole Linux RAID [md] devices. I personally think it should be given a more specific name like 'metaraid' or 'omniraid' or soemthing like that, but I digress). You may have been able to use this to mount your striped volume. From my admittedly brief reading, dmraid appears to be a metadata agnostic device mapper based software RAID driver. That is, it can understand and operate RAID volumes created using many vendors' software RAID chips and cards and their proprietary metadata formats by itself, without the need to install drivers from individual vendors. Pretty cool! However, the userspace tools for dmraid are presently keyword masked in gentoo, and the somewhat sparse documentation for dmaid seems to indicate that it's not quite ready for prime time yet. Looks interestin
Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
On 12/10/2005 3:47 PM Shawn Haggett wrote: Drew Tomlinson wrote: On 12/10/2005 1:17 PM Stroller wrote: On Dec 10, 2005, at 5:08 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a system on an Abit motherboard with the Nvidia GeForce 4 chipset. There are two SATA disks in a hardward stripe configuration using the controller built in to the motherboard. ... I booted the latest Knoppix dated 9/23/05 and see two icons on the desktop for my drives. One for sda the other for sdb. I can not mount either. I assume this is because Knoppix is seeing each drive individually instead of the one logical striped drive it is. I'm no expert on this, but I believe that many ATA "hardware" RAID arrangements in fact just use their Windoze drivers to do software RAID. I'd do some research via Googling the chipset &/or board's model number if I were you. I haven't found anything yet but then I haven't looked real hard. However I suspect this does not rely on any Windows drivers as the controller is managed long before Windows boots. Just after POST and before the OS starts, a brief message showing the controller is displayed. By pressing F10, I can manage my stripe. Much like I see most SCSI cards. Have a look at: http://people.redhat.com/~heinzm/sw/dmraid/ I bought an ABit motherboard a while ago with a SIL3114 "raid controller". While it gives you an option at boot to manage the drives, all this does is configure the drivers so the software can see them as a raid set, i.e. it's not true hardware raid. Shawn Haggett Thanks for that info. Drew -- Visit The Alchemist's Warehouse Magic Tricks, DVDs, Videos, Books, & More! http://www.alchemistswarehouse.com -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
Drew Tomlinson wrote: On 12/10/2005 1:17 PM Stroller wrote: On Dec 10, 2005, at 5:08 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a system on an Abit motherboard with the Nvidia GeForce 4 chipset. There are two SATA disks in a hardward stripe configuration using the controller built in to the motherboard. ... I booted the latest Knoppix dated 9/23/05 and see two icons on the desktop for my drives. One for sda the other for sdb. I can not mount either. I assume this is because Knoppix is seeing each drive individually instead of the one logical striped drive it is. I'm no expert on this, but I believe that many ATA "hardware" RAID arrangements in fact just use their Windoze drivers to do software RAID. I'd do some research via Googling the chipset &/or board's model number if I were you. I haven't found anything yet but then I haven't looked real hard. However I suspect this does not rely on any Windows drivers as the controller is managed long before Windows boots. Just after POST and before the OS starts, a brief message showing the controller is displayed. By pressing F10, I can manage my stripe. Much like I see most SCSI cards. Have a look at: http://people.redhat.com/~heinzm/sw/dmraid/ I bought an ABit motherboard a while ago with a SIL3114 "raid controller". While it gives you an option at boot to manage the drives, all this does is configure the drivers so the software can see them as a raid set, i.e. it's not true hardware raid. Shawn Haggett -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
On Dec 10, 2005, at 9:04 pm, Nick Smith wrote: ... i know that doesnt answer your knoppix question but i deal with that crap everyday and i have tried using knoppix a few times and it had problems with the ntfs partitions. where would you put the data once you got it? its booted off the cd, so even if it was a burner how would you burn something when the drive is being used? a flash drive possibly. but probably the easiest way to get that data (sorry to say) is get winders functioning again, get your data, and then blow it away. That's funny - I deal with Windows problems all day & everyday & I prefer Knoppix for getting data off failed Windows installations. I've never experienced any problems reading from NTFS partitions and prefer to use that than having to worry about a Windows install forgetting to copy "hidden" files (such as Outlook Application Data or Outlook Distress Identities) or something. I have confidence that if I do `cp -rvf * /to/somewhere/` then every file will be copied. I use a portable USB hard-drive which Knoppix recognises & makes a /mnt/uba1 (or /mnt/sda1 if I connect it with firewire) entry for and just boot with `knoppix 2`. It's interesting how different people do the same thing different ways, Stroller. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
On 12/10/2005 1:50 PM Neil Bothwick wrote: On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 12:08:50 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However there is some data on the drive that I'd like to recover before blowing the disk away. I booted the latest Knoppix dated 9/23/05 and see two icons on the desktop for my drives. One for sda the other for sdb. I can not mount either. I assume this is because Knoppix is seeing each drive individually instead of the one logical striped drive it is. There used to be problems accessing RAID arrays from Knoppix, and LVM still doesn't work AFAIK. The solution is to use a different live CD. As you plan to install Gentoo, it seems reasonable to assume you have a Gentoo CD, so try that. The Recovery Is Possible! live CD also worked with my RAID setup. Thanks for the encouragement. I attempted a Windows overlay install again and this time it seems to have worked! However I'll keep the live CD in mind for future emergencies. I started with Knoppix because a previous Gentoo installation I did wouldn't work with the live CD. I had an Advansys SCSI card in that box which wasn't supported on the live CD but was supported with Knoppix. Thanks, Drew -- Visit The Alchemist's Warehouse Magic Tricks, DVDs, Videos, Books, & More! http://www.alchemistswarehouse.com -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
On 12/10/2005 1:17 PM Stroller wrote: On Dec 10, 2005, at 5:08 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a system on an Abit motherboard with the Nvidia GeForce 4 chipset. There are two SATA disks in a hardward stripe configuration using the controller built in to the motherboard. ... I booted the latest Knoppix dated 9/23/05 and see two icons on the desktop for my drives. One for sda the other for sdb. I can not mount either. I assume this is because Knoppix is seeing each drive individually instead of the one logical striped drive it is. I'm no expert on this, but I believe that many ATA "hardware" RAID arrangements in fact just use their Windoze drivers to do software RAID. I'd do some research via Googling the chipset &/or board's model number if I were you. I haven't found anything yet but then I haven't looked real hard. However I suspect this does not rely on any Windows drivers as the controller is managed long before Windows boots. Just after POST and before the OS starts, a brief message showing the controller is displayed. By pressing F10, I can manage my stripe. Much like I see most SCSI cards. Is there some magic I can perform at the boot prompt to get Knoppix to see the two individual drives as one logical striped drive? I can't recover the data from booting Windows because it's all screwed up and reboots itself shortly after logon. If my guess is correct then the best thing might be to install Windows on a spare drive & boot from that to see the RAID as one. You might try booting with a Windows CD & see if the RAID is recognised as a single partition... if you get the option to do a repair install you _should_ be able to get an at-least-mostly-working Windows install & all your data intact. Recover the data to a portable drive & format. Thanks. I tried an overlay install again and things seem to be going well. Copying data now. Thanks for your ideas! Drew -- Visit The Alchemist's Warehouse Magic Tricks, DVDs, Videos, Books, & More! http://www.alchemistswarehouse.com -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
On 12/10/2005 1:04 PM Nick Smith wrote: On 12/10/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I have a system on an Abit motherboard with the Nvidia GeForce 4 chipset. There are two SATA disks in a hardward stripe configuration using the controller built in to the motherboard. The machine and disks were used as a Windows XP workstation. Now that Windows installation is hosed up and I'm using the opportunity to covert this machine to a Gentoo desktop. However there is some data on the drive that I'd like to recover before blowing the disk away. I booted the latest Knoppix dated 9/23/05 and see two icons on the desktop for my drives. One for sda the other for sdb. I can not mount either. I assume this is because Knoppix is seeing each drive individually instead of the one logical striped drive it is. Is there some magic I can perform at the boot prompt to get Knoppix to see the two individual drives as one logical striped drive? I can't recover the data from booting Windows because it's all screwed up and reboots itself shortly after logon. Thanks, Drew -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list what about safe mode? Safe mode with networking still leaves me without networking which I need or an overlay install? Tried that. Still hosed or even the recovery console? Never had any luck with this. Maybe I just don't know how to use it? i know that doesnt answer your knoppix question but i deal with that crap everyday and i have tried using knoppix a few times and it had problems with the ntfs partitions. where would you put the data once you got it? Was hoping to mount an smbfs filesystem and transfer it to another machine. Hence the need for networking above. its booted off the cd, so even if it was a burner how would you burn something when the drive is being used? a flash drive possibly. but probably the easiest way to get that data (sorry to say) is get winders functioning again, get your data, and then blow it away. which rises a question, if its a hardware raid stripe, i dont think knoppix should be seeing both drives, i thought the hardware controller told it what to see, so it should only see the one raid device, at least that was my take on it. This is what I thought too. hope some of this helps. At least I know I'm not the only one confused. :) Thanks, Drew -- Visit The Alchemist's Warehouse Magic Tricks, DVDs, Videos, Books, & More! http://www.alchemistswarehouse.com -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
On Sat, 10 Dec 2005 12:08:50 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > However there is some data on the drive that I'd like to recover before > blowing the disk away. I booted the latest Knoppix dated 9/23/05 and > see two icons on the desktop for my drives. One for sda the other for > sdb. I can not mount either. I assume this is because Knoppix is > seeing each drive individually instead of the one logical striped drive > it is. There used to be problems accessing RAID arrays from Knoppix, and LVM still doesn't work AFAIK. The solution is to use a different live CD. As you plan to install Gentoo, it seems reasonable to assume you have a Gentoo CD, so try that. The Recovery Is Possible! live CD also worked with my RAID setup. -- Neil Bothwick I am in total control, but don't tell my wife. signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
On Dec 10, 2005, at 5:08 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I have a system on an Abit motherboard with the Nvidia GeForce 4 chipset. There are two SATA disks in a hardward stripe configuration using the controller built in to the motherboard. ... I booted the latest Knoppix dated 9/23/05 and see two icons on the desktop for my drives. One for sda the other for sdb. I can not mount either. I assume this is because Knoppix is seeing each drive individually instead of the one logical striped drive it is. I'm no expert on this, but I believe that many ATA "hardware" RAID arrangements in fact just use their Windoze drivers to do software RAID. I'd do some research via Googling the chipset &/or board's model number if I were you. Is there some magic I can perform at the boot prompt to get Knoppix to see the two individual drives as one logical striped drive? I can't recover the data from booting Windows because it's all screwed up and reboots itself shortly after logon. If my guess is correct then the best thing might be to install Windows on a spare drive & boot from that to see the RAID as one. You might try booting with a Windows CD & see if the RAID is recognised as a single partition... if you get the option to do a repair install you _should_ be able to get an at-least-mostly-working Windows install & all your data intact. Recover the data to a portable drive & format. Stroller. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
On 12/10/05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I have a system on an Abit motherboard with the Nvidia GeForce 4 chipset. > There are two SATA disks in a hardward stripe configuration using the > controller built in to the motherboard. The machine and disks were used as a > Windows XP workstation. Now that Windows installation is hosed up and I'm > using the opportunity to covert this machine to a Gentoo desktop. > > However there is some data on the drive that I'd like to recover before > blowing the disk away. I booted the latest Knoppix dated 9/23/05 and see two > icons on the desktop for my drives. One for sda the other for sdb. I can > not mount either. I assume this is because Knoppix is seeing each drive > individually instead of the one logical striped drive it is. > > Is there some magic I can perform at the boot prompt to get Knoppix to see the > two individual drives as one logical striped drive? I can't recover the data > from booting Windows because it's all screwed up and reboots itself shortly > after logon. > > Thanks, > > Drew > -- > gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list > > what about safe mode? or an overlay install? or even the recovery console? i know that doesnt answer your knoppix question but i deal with that crap everyday and i have tried using knoppix a few times and it had problems with the ntfs partitions. where would you put the data once you got it? its booted off the cd, so even if it was a burner how would you burn something when the drive is being used? a flash drive possibly. but probably the easiest way to get that data (sorry to say) is get winders functioning again, get your data, and then blow it away. which rises a question, if its a hardware raid stripe, i dont think knoppix should be seeing both drives, i thought the hardware controller told it what to see, so it should only see the one raid device, at least that was my take on it. hope some of this helps. -- Linux, because I'd rather own a free OS than steal one that's not worth paying for. -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
Re: [gentoo-user] Knoppix Install Method
On Saturday 10 December 2005 12:08 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I have a system on an Abit motherboard with the Nvidia GeForce 4 > chipset. Make that an NForce 4 chipset. Got confused between graphics and motherboards. :) > here are two SATA disks in a hardward stripe > configuration using the controller built in to the motherboard. > The machine and disks were used as a Windows XP workstation. Now > that Windows installation is hosed up and I'm using the opportunity > to covert this machine to a Gentoo desktop. > > However there is some data on the drive that I'd like to recover > before blowing the disk away. I booted the latest Knoppix dated > 9/23/05 and see two icons on the desktop for my drives. One for > sda the other for sdb. I can not mount either. I assume this is > because Knoppix is seeing each drive individually instead of the > one logical striped drive it is. > > Is there some magic I can perform at the boot prompt to get Knoppix > to see the two individual drives as one logical striped drive? I > can't recover the data from booting Windows because it's all > screwed up and reboots itself shortly after logon. > > Thanks, > > Drew -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
