Re: SATA, RAID, A8N-E, 3800+ help
On 1/27/06, Keith Ballantyne <ihcfan@braincookie.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I recently bought an Asus A8N-E mobo and AMD64 3800+ CPU. I then bought
> RAM, a case, and an ATI 300-based PCI Express 16 video card. I used
> netinstall sarge and managed to install 32-bit using the 2.6 kernel (as the
> 2.4 kernel wouldn't recognize my network card).
Hi,
I own an Asus A8N-E mobo too.
>
> ...a few days passed, and I realized that I wanted the 64-bit core. I
> recompiled the kernel, and then realized there was a 64-bit distribution, so
> I downloaded both the testing release (Etch) and the 31r1a netinstalls.
> 31r1a didn't recognize my onboard network, but Etch did.
>
> ...a few more days passed and I decided to buy 4 SATA II drives in an
> attempt to run RAID 0+1. I configured the BIOS and ran the installer, but
> the installer sees hda through hdd rather than a single RAID drive. In
> subsequent research (including this list archive) it appears that the BIOS
> RAID is considered 'inferior' to the software RAID support in Linux. So, my
> questions are:
>
> 1) Why is the ASUS BIOS RAID inferior to software RAID on Linux?
AFAIK the RAID on this motherboard is not a real hardware RAID, it is
done by software. So you unless you use a software to control it Linux
is not going to see it. See these threads for details:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=57548
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=661719#post661719
Quote from: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Install_Gentoo_with_NVRAID_using_dmraid
"The NVRAID BIOS is actually a software raid. The method used to
install here will work with other operating systems such as Windows
with no configuration changes needed with Windows.
In linux 2.4 the Ataraid kernel framework provided support for
software RAID assisted by the BIOS. For kernel 2.6 the device-mapper
runtime can do the same kind of work, but it's configured in userspace
however. Heinz Maulshagen introduced the dmraid tool to create RAID
mappings using the kernel device-mapper subsystem. The controllers
supported are (mostly cheap) Fake-RAID IDE / SATA controllers which
have BIOS functions on it. Most common ones are: Promise Fasttrack
controllers as well as HPT 37x, Intel and LSI. Also serial ata RAID
controllers like Silicon Image Medley and Nvidia Nforce are supported
by the program."
I didn't use the RAID "feature" of A8N-E, as I have only one SATA drive.
> 2) Is it possible to install 31r1a instead of the Etch release (I'm not
> overly keen on working with Etch, but will do it if it's a better 64-bit
> option...
I installed Etch, and then did a dist-upgrade to sid. I didn't have
any problems with it so far. I didn't try running sarge, so I can't
tell which one works better.
> In the few days I played with 64-bit Etch it seemed to work well,
> but I didn't have most of the utilties I need available from the
> installer/package manager).
What utilities weren't available?
> 3) Do I need to flash the BIOS for things to work?
I didn't flash the BIOS. And "things" are working for me, I mean:
sound (with ALSA), network (with in-kernel forcedeth driver), sata, sensors, ...
What do you think a BIOS flash would solve?
> 4) Is ATI 300 support better in Etch?
I have a different video card, so I can't help you here.
>
> Thanks,
>
> ihcfan
Kind regards
edwin
>
>
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