[HOWTO] HPT, Promise, Medley, Intel, Nvidia RAID Dualboot

[irondog]

[TheDot]

Reason for deleting the other posts:

Finally realized the true meaning behind the prerequisites of this HOWTO...

How I discovered this:

1) I partitioned via the gen2dmraid livecd, then rebooted, and installed windoze where I wanted it, installed some drivers for my equipment and a few programs, and adjusted my settings how I wanted.

2) I deleted the array and recreated the array (thinking I was going to have to reinstall windoze because of this and I'd run into the same catch 22...), which gave me none of the errors I was experiencing before when booting with that same CD, which when that DID happen, I was still using the previous array.

3) I then installed Linux how I wanted it, with repartitioning and all through Linux. I installed grub to both the MBR ("setup (hd0)") and the boot partition ("setup (hd0,0)") so that I had all my grounds covered (this may have been a little much, but I wanted to be sure that at least grub would load), and proceeded with the rest of the installation.

4) I then tested (without reinstalling windoze, mind you), and believe it or not, my installation of windoze where I had installed that stuff and adjusted my settings, booted from the grub menu (which obviously loaded)!! Needless to say I sat in total disbelief with my jaw dropped...

5) However, when I tried to boot Linux, I got a "Error 15: File not found." meaning somewhere in (mostly likely) my grub.conf file, I screwed up. What's worse is I didn't write down the cryptic part of the names of the partitions, so I have to start over with the linux installation instead of just manually editing the grub menu at prompt time, because I think that's where I messed up.

Now, I sat back and thought about this, and realized, my installation of windoze stayed there because I made the partitions the same size every time, whether or not I recreated the array or not, and I also did not format that paticular partition with either OS. I also remembered that windoze doesn't care whether or not the mbr is dos or unix based, as long as it has something to "prime the boot" sort of speak - I had forgotten this because I havent reinstalled on my own system in a VERY long time - we're talking at least 6 months... BTW, you can use the windoze install CD to recreate the mbr , so installing grub to it doesn't really matter for if you ever decide to get rid of linux () (<-- yes, that's me in shock about the thought of ever getting rid of linux completely out of my life, hehe )

Later,
TheDot

[blunck2]

Hi all,

Like you all, I worked through Gerte's great gen2dmraid bootstrapper and managed to get Gentoo installed on my NVidia RAID. I'm using RAID1 because I care more about stability than I do about performance.

I was disappointed when I saw that disconnecting a drive while the OS is running resulted in a hung OS. But, I took the NVidia RAID for what I paid for it (next to nothing cause it's integrated) and decided to try to rebuild the array using a "clean" disk.

I used the "rebuild" function in BIOS, and that appears to only copy the configuration from the good disk to the "clean" disk. I'm struggling to find out how to actually re-mirror the contents of the good disk to the "clean disk". I don't have Windows installed, and I don't want to have to install Windows just to do re-mirroring.

I tried booting the gen2dmraid CD and "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb", crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. After about 2 hours (160GB disks) I found out that the partition table existed, but when I rebooted the RAID BIOS reported "error" and wouldn't even allow me to rebuild!

Has anyone successfully re-mirrored the RAID content from a "good" disk to a new "clean" disk? If so, did you have to use the Windows Nvidia RAID utility? Or is there another way that I'm missing.

Thanks in advance for replying!!

-Chris




-c

[Phk]

Hi there guys!

I've read this thread, and i cant find any info for my problem..

My DMraid segfaults at reboot!

Please check it HERE, and try to help me =)

thanks rightaway!
_________________
"# cat /dev/urandom >> /tmp/life"

[dhi]

Hi there,

my Problem is getting gentoo to correctly detect my Nvidia Raidset.

What i have done so far:

I read all the Howtos about Installing NVRAID on gentoo etc and this Thread... Some solutions here and there have brought me further but now im at a point i found no solution so far

The Problem:

I booted with the gentoo 2006.0 Minimal Live CD with the option "dodmraid" all worked fine, i partitoned my disk installed a stage3-environment and get grub to work correctly. I compiled my kernel with "genkernel --dmraid --menuconfig all" (and compiled the sata drivers in it, not as modules) as it is the easiest way for now after i got this to work i'll optimise my kernel-config...

Ok after the compilation has finished i start up my PC with this Kernel - then it hangs at this point:

[Tyler_Durden]

[dhi]

That did the trick, very big thx

[Enverex]

The version in portage doesn't work with the 2.6.16 kernel, but does it work with the 2.6.17 kernel?

[devsk]

so, the problem was with kernel and not dmraid package?