FC on ASUS SLI Deluxe for AMD64 X2

[Boris Devouge]

Lamont R. Peterson wrote:
> On Tuesday 28 February 2006 08:51am, Boris Devouge wrote:
>> Mcguffey, David C wrote:
>>> Just finished building a dual boot workstation using the ASUS SLI Deluxe,
>>> an AMD64 X2 4200, 4 GB of RAM, two 250 GB SATA in RAID 0 using the
>>> onboard Nvida raid contoller, and an ATI Radeon X850 XT PCI-E video card.
>>>
>>> Based on prior guidance to install Windows first on a dual-boot system,
>>> Win XP 64 bit is installed and running A-OK on a 250 GB partition.
>>>
>>> Next step is to install FC4 or FC5 (preferably FC5) on the remaining 250
>>> GB of unpartitioned space.
>>>
>>> Anything I need to be aware of before I start this process?  Win XP 64
>>> required a special Nvida RAID driver as part of the install process. 
>>> Will FC4/5 recognize the existing Nvida stripe RAID, or will I have to do
>>> something special during the install?
>>>
>>> Dave McGuffey
>>> Principal Information Assurance Engineer / ISSE
>>> SAIC IISBU, Columbia, MD
>> As far as I am aware, the nvidia sata raid is one of those false
>> hardware raid ( really a software raid ) and it does require a special
>> driver ( windows only ) to pick up the logical volume information
>> defined on the array.
> 
> No, it's not windows only.
> 
> I have a co-worker who has an nVidia Fake-RAID (a.k.a. FRAID) equipped 
> motherboard who has been using the dmraid stuff in FC5 test releases.  There 
> have been some problems (see the thread: 
> [ http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list/2006-February/msg01007.html ]), 
> but it's getting closer.
> 

You are completely right about the dm-raid stuff, the _only_ quite 
important issue, is that anaconda does not pick up the dmraid stuff yet 
( in stable RHEL / FC, test releases, as you stated, are working towards 
this), therefore, if he has a raid 0 configured under windows, i can't 
see anyway where he will be able to write to that logical volume at install.

>> More information is available there:
>> http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html#nvidia
> 
> I didn't have time to look at this, so I have no comment on it.
> 
>> On FC/RHEL, the system will see 2 separate drives instead of the raid 0
>> you defined using the raid bios utility. So you can use software raid
>> but it will hose your window installation.
> 
> I can not comment authoritatively, as I do not have one of these FRAIDs.  
> However, I do not think this statement is accurate if you are using the 
> dmraid support, but it probably is in the described setup.
> 
>> Hope this helps.
> 
> Me too.
> 

Cheers.