Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[James Knott]

Carlos E. R. wrote:

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The Friday 2007-06-22 at 07:46 -0400, Richard Creighton wrote:

  

The ultimate goal should be to have the best raid 5 possible with the
hardware you have ;-p

  



...I did.   In fact, in order to get the 5th drive to run my tests, I
had to cannibalize an older RedHat system that is 'wounded' because  I
lost a cpu fan and damaged the cpu chip.   I was going to replace the MB
in that system at some point but now, I may also be short a drive having
had to use it in what I thought was ample hardware;  A new ASUS system
MB with 4 SATA drives and with a so-called hardware raid controller
built-in to the MB.   As it turns out, that controller is a 'fake-raid'
which borrows cpu cycles but still, with the hardware I had, under
Windoze, the configuration would have worked (demonstrated), but I
refuse to contaminate my system with that OS and I believe anything
Windoze can do, Linux can (or should) be able to do better.   




Thus, use software raid in linux, which also works out of the box. No need 
to use the fake-raid drivers, and has probably the same speed, and decidly

better support and compatibility.

I don't see any advantage in using the fake raid method, except using 
windows - and you aren't, so why go the difficult road?


With software raid you do not need an extra drive, just a plain /boot 
partition replicated on all disks. I'm almost sure it is documented 
somewhere.


  


I'm planning on experimenting with that.  I recently bought an IBM 
Netfinity X232 server, with 4 18G SCSI disks.  I've currently got SUSE 
10.2 running on it, but without RAID.



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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Joe Morris (NTM)]

Richard Creighton wrote:
> So far
> (and until now), my belief in Linux has been vindicated and there has
> been nothing I have needed or wanted to  do that Linux hasn't been able
> to do.   I would hate to go to my grave with Windoze doing something
> that Linux cannot for simple want of a proper driver or a few magic
> incantations in some config file made by someone a lot smarter than I am
> during installation.   
You said IIRC that the install sees the individual drives.  If you have
your BIOS set to boot from one of those drives, install GRUB on that
MBR, load the fake-raid driver via the initrd, and have boot in its own
partition on that drive, That should work, and your root can be on the
raid5 fake raid.  To be honest, though, I would personally forget the
onboard raid which is a worse implementation than the linux software
raid, and I would go with linux software raid (which is what I did do). 
Windows cannot install to these fake raid either without the vendor
supplied driver (usually a floppy), and though you CAN make it work
(probably easier to install to boot on the IDE and after install move it
to the raid array), I believe performance and problems are worse than
linux software raid.

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Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 10.2 x86_64





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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Richard Creighton]

Kenneth Schneider wrote:


 >>> controller built-in to the ASUS motherboard with the 4 SATA drives that
 board can natively control *without* having to use a 5th IDE or
external
 drive just to boot the system>

>>> The ultimate goal should be to have the best raid 5 possible with the
>>> hardware you have ;-p
>>>  
>> 
>>
>> ...I did.   In fact, in order to get the 5th drive to run my tests, I
>> had to cannibalize an older RedHat system that is 'wounded' because  I
>> lost a cpu fan and damaged the cpu chip.   I was going to replace the MB
>> in that system at some point but now, I may also be short a drive having
>> had to use it in what I thought was ample hardware;  A new ASUS system
>> MB with 4 SATA drives and with a so-called hardware raid controller
>> built-in to the MB.   As it turns out, that controller is a 'fake-raid'
>> which borrows cpu cycles but still, with the hardware I had, under
>> Windoze, the configuration would have worked (demonstrated), but I
>> refuse to contaminate my system with that OS and I believe anything
>> Windoze can do, Linux can (or should) be able to do better.
>>
> You are right that linux _should_ be able to do that same things that
> windows does. The problem is the  s l o w  adoption by the hardware
> providers in providing *proper* drivers for their hardware, like ATI and
> Nvidia are trying to do. This will not happen until they get together
> with the kernel developers to come up with a solution.
>
>  
Very true.I have fought this type of battle for years and I support
vendors that *try* and do my best to vote with my feet against those
vendors that are so  myopic that they only see M$ and ignore Linux and
Mac or anyone else.  I have had very good luck in the past with ASUS and
I do believe Nvidia is trying (their web site has Linux drivers as does
their MB documentation/hardware kit) but as new as their support is,
SUSE 10.2 is newer and I appreciate the difficulty of the manufacturers
trying to hit a  rapidly moving target such as openSUSE.  M$ succeeds in
part because only one entity controls the product, with *us* (meaning
the Linux community), there are thousands of contributers.   That is
both our strength and our weakness.   Strength because we cannot be
railroaded into accepting crappola, weak because it is often hard to get
even two  people to agree on anything, much less thousands.   Even so, I
opt for the challenge of Linux and I  will continue to vote with my feet
and work to make Linux work better than M$ in everything *including*
booting from a 'fake-raid' capable mother board.   I have 'Googled' well
over a thousand articles on this subject, many before posting the first
query here on this support forum and I can assure you that using the
'md-raid' method is not so pretty either (per other suggestions on this
thread - (good link at
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=158475  ... follow
the docs he wrote if you want a good tutorial).Anyway, the search
continues.   The method actually works with Umbuntu live cd install with
a tweak but I prefer to make SUSE work as that is my  preferred distro. 
Thanks for everyone's help...
Richard

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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Kenneth Schneider]

On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 07:46 -0400, Richard Creighton wrote:
> 
> Carlos E. R. wrote:
> >
> > The Friday 2007-06-22 at 03:21 -0400, Richard Creighton wrote:
> >
> > >  > > controller built-in to the ASUS motherboard with the 4 SATA drives that
> > > board can natively control *without* having to use a 5th IDE or external
> > > drive just to boot the system>
> >
> > The ultimate goal should be to have the best raid 5 possible with the
> > hardware you have ;-p
> >
> 
> 
> ...I did.   In fact, in order to get the 5th drive to run my tests, I
> had to cannibalize an older RedHat system that is 'wounded' because  I
> lost a cpu fan and damaged the cpu chip.   I was going to replace the MB
> in that system at some point but now, I may also be short a drive having
> had to use it in what I thought was ample hardware;  A new ASUS system
> MB with 4 SATA drives and with a so-called hardware raid controller
> built-in to the MB.   As it turns out, that controller is a 'fake-raid'
> which borrows cpu cycles but still, with the hardware I had, under
> Windoze, the configuration would have worked (demonstrated), but I
> refuse to contaminate my system with that OS and I believe anything
> Windoze can do, Linux can (or should) be able to do better.

You are right that linux _should_ be able to do that same things that
windows does. The problem is the  s l o w  adoption by the hardware
providers in providing *proper* drivers for their hardware, like ATI and
Nvidia are trying to do. This will not happen until they get together
with the kernel developers to come up with a solution.

-- 
Ken Schneider
UNIX  since 1989, linux since 1994, SuSE  since 1998

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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Carlos E. R.]

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The Friday 2007-06-22 at 07:46 -0400, Richard Creighton wrote:

> > The ultimate goal should be to have the best raid 5 possible with the
> > hardware you have ;-p
> >
> 
> 
> ...I did.   In fact, in order to get the 5th drive to run my tests, I
> had to cannibalize an older RedHat system that is 'wounded' because  I
> lost a cpu fan and damaged the cpu chip.   I was going to replace the MB
> in that system at some point but now, I may also be short a drive having
> had to use it in what I thought was ample hardware;  A new ASUS system
> MB with 4 SATA drives and with a so-called hardware raid controller
> built-in to the MB.   As it turns out, that controller is a 'fake-raid'
> which borrows cpu cycles but still, with the hardware I had, under
> Windoze, the configuration would have worked (demonstrated), but I
> refuse to contaminate my system with that OS and I believe anything
> Windoze can do, Linux can (or should) be able to do better.   


Thus, use software raid in linux, which also works out of the box. No need 
to use the fake-raid drivers, and has probably the same speed, and decidly
better support and compatibility.

I don't see any advantage in using the fake raid method, except using 
windows - and you aren't, so why go the difficult road?

With software raid you do not need an extra drive, just a plain /boot 
partition replicated on all disks. I'm almost sure it is documented 
somewhere.


- -- 
Cheers,
   Carlos E. R.

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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Richard Creighton]

Carlos E. R. wrote:
>
> The Friday 2007-06-22 at 03:21 -0400, Richard Creighton wrote:
>
> >  > controller built-in to the ASUS motherboard with the 4 SATA drives that
> > board can natively control *without* having to use a 5th IDE or external
> > drive just to boot the system>
>
> The ultimate goal should be to have the best raid 5 possible with the
> hardware you have ;-p
>


...I did.   In fact, in order to get the 5th drive to run my tests, I
had to cannibalize an older RedHat system that is 'wounded' because  I
lost a cpu fan and damaged the cpu chip.   I was going to replace the MB
in that system at some point but now, I may also be short a drive having
had to use it in what I thought was ample hardware;  A new ASUS system
MB with 4 SATA drives and with a so-called hardware raid controller
built-in to the MB.   As it turns out, that controller is a 'fake-raid'
which borrows cpu cycles but still, with the hardware I had, under
Windoze, the configuration would have worked (demonstrated), but I
refuse to contaminate my system with that OS and I believe anything
Windoze can do, Linux can (or should) be able to do better.   So far
(and until now), my belief in Linux has been vindicated and there has
been nothing I have needed or wanted to  do that Linux hasn't been able
to do.   I would hate to go to my grave with Windoze doing something
that Linux cannot for simple want of a proper driver or a few magic
incantations in some config file made by someone a lot smarter than I am
during installation.   I should not have to cannibalize old hardware to
make my favorite OS do what my most reviled OS can do.   I used to teach
OS theory in a local college before my stroke took away much of  my
mental abilities and left  me struggling at times to remember even how
to turn the darn thing on,.   I am hoping that someone out there has the
answer.I read an article (referring to Umbuntu if I remember
correctly) which explained how to do it in that distribution
successfully, but I prefer SUSE and would rather what I consider a
superior distribution overall add this feature rather than that I should
have to digress to what I consider a slightly lesser distro (but still
*infinitely* preferable to anything Microsoft makes).  I know it can be
done in other distros, or so I am lead to believe it has been
successfully done, so I am looking to make it happen with SUSE.

Thanks,
Richard
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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Carlos E. R.]

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The Friday 2007-06-22 at 03:21 -0400, Richard Creighton wrote:

>  controller built-in to the ASUS motherboard with the 4 SATA drives that
> board can natively control *without* having to use a 5th IDE or external
> drive just to boot the system>

The ultimate goal should be to have the best raid 5 possible with the 
hardware you have ;-p

...

> > It is probably not in your initrd.  BTW, a quick search shows it is
> > called raid456.

> Thank you allthis initiates another hunt but at least there is a
> glow at the end of the  tunnel   :)Gosh...I hope that isn't a train!

Heh, but you can not read the initrd on a raid 5 "before" booting, so the 
goal of not using an extra drive is fooled :-p

However, on a software raid you can, because /boot is left out of the 
raid.

> PS... I'm 64 years oldI hope I can actually get this solved before
> time runs out.   I don't want my epitaph to read "Windoze won!" :)

:-)

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   Carlos E. R.

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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Richard Creighton]

Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:
> Richard Creighton wrote:
>   

>> I get the following results:
>> ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -r
>> /dev/sda: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
>> data@ 0
>> /dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
>> data@ 0
>> /dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
>> data@ 0
>> /dev/sdd: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
>> data@ 0
>>
>>
>> ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -ay -i
>> ERROR: device-mapper target type "raid45" not in kernel
>>   
>> 
> It is probably not in your initrd.  BTW, a quick search shows it is
> called raid456.
>
>   


Thank you allthis initiates another hunt but at least there is a
glow at the end of the  tunnel   :)Gosh...I hope that isn't a train!

Richard

PS... I'm 64 years oldI hope I can actually get this solved before
time runs out.   I don't want my epitaph to read "Windoze won!" :)
>   
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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Joe Morris (NTM)]

Richard Creighton wrote:
> I get the following results:
> ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -r
> /dev/sda: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
> data@ 0
> /dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
> data@ 0
> /dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
> data@ 0
> /dev/sdd: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
> data@ 0
>
>
> ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -ay -i
> ERROR: device-mapper target type "raid45" not in kernel
>   
It is probably not in your initrd.  BTW, a quick search shows it is
called raid456.

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Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 10.2 x86_64





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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Joe Morris (NTM)]

Richard Creighton wrote:
> 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.
>   
I have a bootable RAID1 (software raid).  GRUB looks at the drives for
the initrd to load the raid1 module.  Do you have the raid45 module in
your initrd modules?
> Any ideas on how to use the 'fake-raid' during the install AS A BOOT
> DEVICE would be appreciated.  
I think the main limitation is GRUB, as it needs to be able to access
/boot/grub, meaning it has to be able to read the disk.  It cannot load
a driver from the very drive it needs the driver for to be able to
read.  It is simple with boot on your IDE drive.
>  As I stated, I can't see how to use it as
> the root device or boot device, only as a data device.
>
>   
Root on the array is no problem, but it is definitely easiest to have
boot (and therefore the kernel, initrd, and /boot/grub/*) on a GRUB
natively reachable drive.  On my system (only raid 1, including boot),
GRUB sees the individual drives when looking for boot, i.e. /dev/hda5. 
So once it has found boot, it can load everything it needs to load root
on the raid1.  If GRUB can see the individual drive, i.e. sdax of the
array to read boot, it would probably work, but may be too complicated
for the tools.  In other words, if your boot was on your array, if you
knew which disk actually has boot so you can give GRUB the location in a
way it can see, i.e. sda2 or whatever, it should work, but may need
manual config (i.e. I have had better success from the GRUB command line
to install on the MBR of a particular drive, looking for boot on a
particular drive, even though in menu.lst the root dev is md0).  HTH.

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Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 10.2 x86_64





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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Greg Freemyer]

On 6/21/07, Richard Creighton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


> 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.


Richard,

Why don't you repost a new thread about the above.

Personally I do use real hardware raid (3ware cards) so I don't know
how to do a bootable md-raid setup, but I know it has been discussed
on this list before.

If I recall correctly you manually mirror the mbr and possibly /boot.
Then you have the raid 5 setup defined in your initrd.

Greg
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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Richard Creighton]

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.
> 
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

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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Greg Freemyer]

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?

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.

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.

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.

HTH
Greg

On 6/21/07, Richard Creighton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Thanks all.  It turns out I *do* have the so-called 'fake-RAID' as was
suggested earlier.   I've made some progressbut

Greg Freemyer wrote:
> On 6/20/07, Richard Creighton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> At the risk of appearing stupid, which I am willing to do, I recently
>> purchased a ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard with intergral RAID5 hardware
>> controller.   I also purchased 4 WD 400G SATA drives to make a 1.09T
>> (usable space) raid5 array under Linux, SUSE 10.2.
>> 
>
> I don't know about your MB, but most onboard raid is fake-raid.
>
> http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html
> 

This was very helpful

> 
> If you need dual boot to the raid, the you can look at the dmraid
> module and see if your controller is supported.
>
> Greg


...tracking down the latest incarnation of *dmraid* from the author's
website, I found a version that supported the NForce/Nvidia chipset.
Installing it on a 5th drive (my 'Plan B') below:

> Failing that, if I install a 5th drive, an IDE device for the purpose of
> booting the system, is there a driver/module that I could load after
> booting that would allow me to use the hardware raid5 drives rather than
> depend on the software raid?
I get the following results:

ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -r
/dev/sda: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
data@ 0
/dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
data@ 0
/dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
data@ 0
/dev/sdd: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
data@ 0


ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -ay -i
ERROR: device-mapper target type "raid45" not in kernel

I am using 10.2 with the latest kernel available via normal updates that
I am aware of without going to alpha versions.
Even though this system is a dual-core AMD, I chose to install a 32bit
OS initially to get things set up before tackling the somewhat sparse 64
bit world that I see has even more challanges ahead :(

OS:  Linux 2.6.18.8-0.3-bigsmp i686
  System:  openSUSE 10.2 (i586)
  KDE:  3.5.5 "release 45.4"

My question now appears to be, what do I have to do to get the 'raid45'
target type error resolved?   I don't want to use a 'lower' raid level
than raid 5 because with 1Tb of space, I want very badly to have the
redundancy offered by that mode without an unnecessary redundancy of
hardware backup required by 'lower' raid levels.   As the fake-raid
supports level 5, I'd like to use it if possible.

My next goal would be to be able to install and boot using the
raid5/dmraid techniques suggested in the above URL, but for now, I'd be
content with solving the 'raid45' error.

Thanks in advance.
Richard





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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Richard Creighton]

Thanks all.  It turns out I *do* have the so-called 'fake-RAID' as was
suggested earlier.   I've made some progressbut

Greg Freemyer wrote:
> On 6/20/07, Richard Creighton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> At the risk of appearing stupid, which I am willing to do, I recently
>> purchased a ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard with intergral RAID5 hardware
>> controller.   I also purchased 4 WD 400G SATA drives to make a 1.09T
>> (usable space) raid5 array under Linux, SUSE 10.2.
>> 
>
> I don't know about your MB, but most onboard raid is fake-raid.
>
> http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html
> 

This was very helpful

> 
> If you need dual boot to the raid, the you can look at the dmraid
> module and see if your controller is supported.
>
> Greg


...tracking down the latest incarnation of *dmraid* from the author's
website, I found a version that supported the NForce/Nvidia chipset.  
Installing it on a 5th drive (my 'Plan B') below:

> Failing that, if I install a 5th drive, an IDE device for the purpose of
> booting the system, is there a driver/module that I could load after
> booting that would allow me to use the hardware raid5 drives rather than
> depend on the software raid?
I get the following results:

ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -r
/dev/sda: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
data@ 0
/dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
data@ 0
/dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
data@ 0
/dev/sdd: nvidia, "nvidia_baedieei", raid5_ls, ok, 781422766 sectors,
data@ 0


ASUS:/home/rich # dmraid -ay -i
ERROR: device-mapper target type "raid45" not in kernel

I am using 10.2 with the latest kernel available via normal updates that
I am aware of without going to alpha versions.  
Even though this system is a dual-core AMD, I chose to install a 32bit
OS initially to get things set up before tackling the somewhat sparse 64
bit world that I see has even more challanges ahead :(

OS:  Linux 2.6.18.8-0.3-bigsmp i686
  System:  openSUSE 10.2 (i586)
  KDE:  3.5.5 "release 45.4"

My question now appears to be, what do I have to do to get the 'raid45'
target type error resolved?   I don't want to use a 'lower' raid level
than raid 5 because with 1Tb of space, I want very badly to have the
redundancy offered by that mode without an unnecessary redundancy of
hardware backup required by 'lower' raid levels.   As the fake-raid
supports level 5, I'd like to use it if possible.

My next goal would be to be able to install and boot using the
raid5/dmraid techniques suggested in the above URL, but for now, I'd be
content with solving the 'raid45' error.

Thanks in advance.
Richard

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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[John Andersen]

On Wednesday 20 June 2007, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> I don't know about your MB, but most onboard raid is fake-raid.
>
> http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html
>
> If yours is fake-raid and you don't need Windows dual boot capability,
> then using software raid is your preferred choice.  ie. Fake raid does
> NOT offload any CPU load,

And that failure to offload any raid processing is a GOOD thing, as your
CPU is vastly more powerful than all but the most expensive Raid Cards
and software raid is fast, robust, flexible, an in most cases out-performs
hardware raid.

(When the raid card starts to cost more than your MOBO+CPU it MIGHT
actually outperform software raid, but this is seldom born out for raids of 
the size the OP is contemplating.)

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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Richard Creighton]

I was *told* that it was hardware raid 5, *however* that said, I will
check.   They knew I was not and would not ever be using windoze and the
raid configuration *is* done from bios but as you said, it is possible
it is not a true XOR based hardware raid.   I will not be using Dual
boot and if I did need WIndoze, I would wear VMware rubber gloves :)   
When I test Alpha software, I always load it under VMware first to see
what 'gotchas' show up but  this is a new machine and new hardware with
no OS yet installed.   Thanks for the tip.

Greg Freemyer wrote:
> On 6/20/07, Richard Creighton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> At the risk of appearing stupid, which I am willing to do, I recently
>> purchased a ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard with intergral RAID5 hardware
>> controller.   I also purchased 4 WD 400G SATA drives to make a 1.09T
>> (usable space) raid5 array under Linux, SUSE 10.2.
>> 
>
> I don't know about your MB, but most onboard raid is fake-raid.
>
> http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html
>
> If yours is fake-raid and you don't need Windows dual boot capability,
> then using software raid is your preferred choice.  ie. Fake raid does
> NOT offload any CPU load, it just allows Windows users to have a Raid
> setup tool prior to installing windows.
>
> If you need dual boot to the raid, the you can look at the dmraid
> module and see if your controller is supported.
>
> Greg
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Re: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Greg Freemyer]

On 6/20/07, Richard Creighton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

At the risk of appearing stupid, which I am willing to do, I recently
purchased a ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard with intergral RAID5 hardware
controller.   I also purchased 4 WD 400G SATA drives to make a 1.09T
(usable space) raid5 array under Linux, SUSE 10.2.

The MB setup shows the drives properly configured and online ready for
booting (which of course I can't until I populate it with an OS)   As
this MB only has 4 SATA ports, I also had to use 1 IDE port for the
DVD-RW device, which does boot the 10.2 SUSE installation DVD just
fine.   No errors are reported with media check, nor are any errors
reported when I run the memory check overnight.

When I attempt to install the OS, the partitioner detects all 4 SATA
drives INDIVIDUALLY as SD1-4 and offers to partition them as individual
drives.   It also gives the option to make a SOFTWARE raid5 array or LVM
(which would defeat the hardware raid controller builtin to the MB).
Neither option is what I want.  The board comes with WINDOWS drivers,
but there is no way in HE!! that I will put THAT on this system.   I
would rather the hardware rot first.   I have 3 other machines running
10.2 on my local LAN but none running RAID so I wanted a place to backup
stuff and a place to do some movie editing.

The question is, HOW do I get the installation to recognize the HARDWARE
raid that the MB is presenting via the BIOS and visible during the BIOS
configuration but so far NOT visible to the SUSE installation?Is
there a module or driver that can be loaded that would enable the
hardware raid to be visible so that I don't have to create a software
raid?

Failing that, if I install a 5th drive, an IDE device for the purpose of
booting the system, is there a driver/module that I could load after
booting that would allow me to use the hardware raid5 drives rather than
depend on the software raid?

Thanks in advance
Richard


I don't know about your MB, but most onboard raid is fake-raid.

http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html

If yours is fake-raid and you don't need Windows dual boot capability,
then using software raid is your preferred choice.  ie. Fake raid does
NOT offload any CPU load, it just allows Windows users to have a Raid
setup tool prior to installing windows.

If you need dual boot to the raid, the you can look at the dmraid
module and see if your controller is supported.

Greg
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The Norcross Group
Forensics for the 21st Century
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RE: [opensuse] Raid 5 installation

[Jack Malone]

> 
> The question is, HOW do I get the installation to recognize the
> HARDWARE
> raid that the MB is presenting via the BIOS and visible during the BIOS
> configuration but so far NOT visible to the SUSE installation?Is
> there a module or driver that can be loaded that would enable the
> hardware raid to be visible so that I don't have to create a software
> raid?
> 

I'm thinking that suse is not seeing the raid on the motherboard an you
would need a driver if one is out there for that board. You might have to
buy a raid card to do this for now til drivers come out for your motherboard
for linux. I have used 3ware raid cards through out the years with no
problems except for the newest sata raid card 9650. All of the older cards
work fine with suse an when 10.3 comes out that card with work. 

Jack Malone


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