Re: SATA, RAID, A8N-E, 3800+ help

["Keith Ballantyne" <ihcfan@braincookie.com>]

> For the 31r1a to recognize your network, if it went as in my case, the
> installer shouldhave proposed you with a list of network modules. You have 
> to choose something call nforether,I believe.

Thanks.  the 31r1a installer works with the nForce2 network card 10/100 
driver on my asus a8n-e.

So, I've installed about 6 different ways, utltimately arriving at some 
critical error somewhere along the way.
I've read most of the faq/helps/howtos and archives that I could find, and I 
still have the same problem.

I want to use RAID0 for the bulk of my file system.  I would like to even 
use RAID0 for my boot and swap partitions.  I followed the instructions 
outlined at 
http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_software_raid?from=10&comments_per_page=10 
and got further than ever before, but couldn't successfully install either 
GRUB or LILO.

The article above suggests 4 raid partitions
   /boot (50M)
   /swap (1G)
   / (10G)
   /var (the rest)

It is also written specifically for RAID1, though it implies that doing the 
same for RAID0 would work.  I'm worried because I'm unsure if the MBR is 
'striped' in RAID 0, or if the MBR's of each of my 4 drives are exempt. 
Regardless, I've tried it three ways:

   case 1: /boot as a specific 50M partition, on the 1st SATA drive (ext3)
   case 2: /boot as a RAID1 collection of the first 50M worth of all 4 SATA 
drives (ext3).
   case 3: /boot as a RAID0 collection of the first 50M worth of all 4 SATA 
drives (ext3).
   note: In all 3 cases, the remainder of the drive was configured as a 
RAID0 array, and I used LVM (1 volume group) to created two logical volumes, 
a 4G swap volume and the rest (to mount as /).

case 1: allowed me to complete installation, grub appeared to install okay, 
but it doesn't boot, I just get a blank screen.
case 2: the partitioner seemed to change the partition types, and would 
never let me install GRUB.
case 3: would never allow GRUB (or LILO) to install on the RAID0 array.  It 
kept indicating that status couldn't be reread from /dev/md/0.  When I 
rebooted, I would reconstruct the partitions as outlined in case 3 above, 
and the same error would occur.

So, right now I have everything installed except an operational bootloader.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Keith