[ale] Linux Install failure with a Promise onboard RAID controller

[Dow Hurst]

Until you get the driver source from Promise, I would just wait on the 
install.  You'll probably have to compile it on a similar OS distro.  I 
had the same problem with a HighPoint builtin controller.  The ataraid 
and hptraid drivers would not work properly on the newer hardware. 
 Following SuSE's instructions on the support database solved the problem.
Dow


Greg wrote:

>	Situation:	I have an Asus A7V333 motherboard with an on-board Promise
>FastTrak133 IDE/RAID controller that has 2 IDE slots in addition to the
>normal 2 IDE slots.  On the normal on-board IDE slots I have a CD-ROM, a
>CD-DVD player, a CD-RW player and an Iomega 100MB Zip drive. On the 2 RAID
>slots I have set up a mirror with 2 Western Digital 100GB hard drives that
>are currently dual booted into Windows 98 and Windows NT 2000.  The C
>partition is Windows 98 and is FAT32.  The Windows NT 2K has 4 partitions in
>NTFS.  There is about 30GB left over for a Linux  OS.
>
>	Problem:	I cannot install Linux (Suse 8.0) on the unused partition.  My
>research via Google revealed that Promise is not revealing the source of
>their drivers and there is not apparently no one out there for this type of
>what one guy called "pseudo RAID via a BIOS hack".  He did give some
>half-hearted ways around it that he said only worked half the time.
>Promise's site with a "Linux driver" is down with a 404 error.  Even when I
>disconnected everything and tried it on a one of the mirrored disks plugged
>into one of the normal IDE drive slots it did not work, giving me a "No HD
>found" error".  When I used a brand new disk, it labeled it "/dev/ataraid"
>even though RAID was not in use and the disk would not boot, looking for
>something to be passed to the kernel during boot that I could not figure
>out.  The CD rescue mode could boot it up sometimes (1 out of 3 tries).
>
>	I could have sworn that when I first got this mobo I set it up as a quick
>proof of concept in a tri-boot setup using the HD on a normal IDE slot and
>using an image of the Linux partition in the C partition. I used the MS
>bootloader to be able to boot to the Linux (SuSE 8.0) partition.
>
>	Any one got any clues/ideas ?  Ideally I would like to keep the mirror
>intact and just install Linux on the un-used part of the disk.  Would
>another distro work ?
>
>TIA
>
>Greg C.
>
>
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-- 
__________________________________________________________
Dow Hurst                  Office: 770-499-3428
Systems Support Specialist    Fax: 770-423-6744
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Chemistry Department SC428  Email:dhurst at kennesaw.edu
Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com
Kennesaw, GA 30144
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