[Eug-lug] grrrr.... damn computers!

[Garl Grigsby]

Linux Rocks! wrote:

>So, Im still trying to backup my laptop, and thats being a pain in the ass... 
>kbear keeps barfing on me.. getting real tired if that, but whats pissing me 
>off more is this damn raid setup. I still havnt gotten linux to see the 
>drives. I have tested it in windows xp, and the hardware does work. 
>
>This is my hardware:
>
>ASUS P4R800-V Deluxe motherboard.
>onboard SATA/IDE Raid controller (SIS 180)
>
>Ive tried so much stuff I cant list it all, but a summary of what ive tried 
>is:
>Knoppix boot cd (with various boot params) ... no luck
>Gentoo minimal install CD
>Custom Gentoo CD (gen2raid)
>Slackware 10
>
>I have slack installed on a 160 GB disk, on the other IDE controller, and have 
>built many kernels, and tried many stock kernels (including ataraid.i). Ive 
>compiled sata_sis (the driver for sis 180) modules, and in the kernel. Ive 
>compiled libata into the kernel, and modules. 
>Ive tried dmraid (and device mapper). I get "No Sofware RAID disks" message.
>I dont even know how these drives will appear exactly, but none of the kernels 
>Ive used, or modules Ive loaded have shown the 2 raid disks in dmesg (but it 
>does show the controller loading, and 2 controller channels.)
>
>So, Im also confused about what is software raid, soft-hardware raid... It 
>sholdnt be that hard to setup!! but yet it is.
>
>To compund things, Ive read so many docs relating (but not quite right for my 
>setup,) some docs are 2 years old, some dont use my hardware, some use my 
>controller, but not ide, ... its been really frustrating.
>
>So, It seems the current issue is that I simply cannot see these drive under 
>linux. once I can see the drives, I may actually be able to use them.
>If someone has a clue how/what I need to do... please let me know...
>
>
>Jamie
>
>
>
>  
>
Jamie,
    A common thing that you have to do with the sudo-raid cards is tell 
the kernel not to probe the bus for the raid cards. Try adding the 
following to the kernel line in your grub.conf file:

hde=noprobe hdg=noprobe

Another option would be to just use software raid. In the testing I've 
done I have rarely seen much differnce between these lightweight raid 
controllers and software raid. Now a real hardware raid controller 
(think 3Ware) is a completely different story.

Gar;

Garl