Redhat 8/9 or FreeBSD 5.2.1 on ASUS PC-DL Deluxe, anyone?

[Charles Steinkuehler]

Brian Densmore wrote:

>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Kendrick-LUG
>> 
>> >
>> no but you listed the process close enough to what  i was 
>> thinking..   
>> duno if the raid part can be turned off though i think its either you 
>> set it up as a pair of raid drives or you dont.  atleast on 
>> my system.  
>> ruddy ot....   muddles the mind.
>>
> Right, either you build a raid system or you don't. 
> What I meant by testing was to configure and install first without RAID,
> and then trashing it and reinstalling with RAID. The BIOS should be capable
> of turning RAID on/off; if the RAID is built into the MB, which I suspect it is.
> If it is an add-on card, then one would simply remove the card and use the MBs
> built in IDE slots. Provided of course the SATA drives can be plugged into the 
> onboard IDE slots. I know the two ribbon cables and even pin configurations
> are different between SATA and ATA.

I haven't tried your exact setup, but I had an 'interesting' time trying 
to get a Debian testing system up and running with 4x SATA drives and an 
IDE DVD Burner, learning a lot about SATA in the process.

The promise SATA controller is well supported in current kernels (2.4 
and 2.6), but the software RAID provided by the inexpensive low-end SATA 
(and IDE) chips is still experimental.  If you want RAID, I suggest 
using linux-based software RAID instead of trying to use the BIOS 
software RAID, unless there's a really good reason not to (like you're 
trying to dual-boot into windows or something).

Details on the latest SATA and BIOS-RAID support can usually be culled 
from the linux-ide or linux-kernel mailing list (look for "Linux Serial 
ATA (SATA) status report):

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-ide&m=108932910720997&w=2

If you really want to use the BIOS RAID, check out dmraid (Device Mapper 
Raid):
http://people.redhat.com/~heinzm/sw/dmraid/readme

...which claims:
"This is Alpha software and it can destroy your data!"

:-)

NOTE:  Not that you've run into this, but I wound up having to run the 
2.6 kernel to get the PATA DVD writer running with DMA support (I 
couldn't get the IDE-SCSI support running under 2.4 while running with 
SATA drives so the DVD burner was running with programmed I/O...could be 
a goof on my part or a fundamental problem with this combination).

-- 
Charles Steinkuehler
charles at steinkuehler.net