Re: SATA, RAID, A8N-E, 3800+ help
On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 11:52:44PM -0500, Keith Ballantyne wrote:
> 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).
>
> ...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:
Unless you have hardware raid, just pretend the system has no raid at
all (since really, it doesn't).
> 1) Why is the ASUS BIOS RAID inferior to software RAID on Linux?
Because linux has better software raid than the bios. And it is not
tied to specific hardware/bios versions, but can be moved between
systems quite easily. It also is more cpu efficient, and gives you
better ability to monitor the state of the raid. I suspect if windows
had native software raid support, these fakeraid designs wouldn't even
exist.
> 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...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).
I am surprised if the amd64 3.1 doesn't see the network byt i386 3.1
does. They should support the same hardware. There are some detection
issues with nvidia ethernet in amd64 3.1, but usually doing 'modprobe
forcedeth' on console 2 and going back to the installer fixes that. For
some reason the network chip isn't in the pci device listing with 2.6.8
kernel on some nvidiabvoards. The driver loads fine though, when you
ask for it manually.
> 3) Do I need to flash the BIOS for things to work?
It sometimes helps. I don't see any problems here that look bios
related though.
> 4) Is ATI 300 support better in Etch?
Generally ATI is not what I would recommend in terms of good linux
support. You will almost certainly need to use the packages for ati
fglrx (a google search will find the unofficial debian packages for it
along with instructions). Those may require the use of etch. Not sure.
Len Sorensen
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