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I got my revodrive in today, and it is recognized by my mobo's BIOS and I can select it as a bootable device, etc. I have formatted a USB drive with the net install in order to partition, configure, and install the base system.
It seems that I need to configure the RAID array though, since there are 2 sandforce microcontrollers on board. Here is the output of fdisk -l:
[root@archiso ~]# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sdb: 40.0 GB, 40018599936 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40018599936 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Disk /dev/sda doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/sdc: 8086 MB, 8086618112 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 7712 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8497e059
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 1 169 173056 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
Disk /dev/sdc1: 177 MB, 177209344 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 169 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8497e059
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1p1 * 1 169 173056 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFSWhat is the optimal method of using this in Linux? Surely not mdadm.......
According to the devices BIOS it is 64kB striped. This thing will be one beast once it's configured.....
Will I need to do this as a software RAID in a chroot? I'm going on fumes here....been in the lab all day and now I'm back at home playing with expensive toys. 0__o
Thanks in advance!
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The drive is in fact configured as a logical drive as far as the Sandforce controllers go, so all I need to do is implement either dmraid or mdadm. In Windows it requires a driver (a few .inf files, not even an .exe), then it recognizes the logical drive as a pseudo ATA controller. Upon entering Computer Management>Disk Management you are prompted to initialize the logical disk. I stopped there, satisfied that the drive is functional.
Now I need to find some good documentation on dmraid. If anyone has any references it would be greatly appreciated. I'm hoping the Arch or Gentoo wiki will have something, because the man page on dmraid is huge.
I'd rather not use mdadm....
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2 weeks before I bought a revodive and moved my root, boot and home partition to it except var, and tmp is managed through tmpfs. You have to use the dmraid modules, so search the wiki for fakeraid or dmraid and it tells you how to setup partitions and filesystems on it. I recommend using ext4 as a filesystem, btrfs is not mature enough (locks, there's no fsck yet, etc.). The ssd section in the wiki tells you how to align the partitions for the revodrive. Booting is amazingly fast (I used a raid0 harddrive setup before), so worth the change.
Good luck with your new drive, if you need any help, post it into this forum.
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One thing, which is not in the wiki, if the boot partition is on a dmraid raid stripe, you need the grub2-dmraid package from the aur in order to boot, and it compiles only if you change the python links (python and python-config) in /usr/bin to python2, and then the package compiles fine, and you could setup grub2 on a dmraid stripe.
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All right thanks for the tips. I hope I'll have enough time to work on it tonight....not sure yet. So do you think that I should move my existing partitions over from my current RAID0 array (this is on a PERC 5/i across 3 500 GB drives)? The only partitions that I could fit would be / and boot, since my home was huge. I think it was something like 1.1TB. I also plan to use a tmpfs via /dev/shm at around 1000MB or possibly more...I have 8GB of memory in this system. I used 1000MB on my laptop with 4GB of memory.
Tomorrow the rest of my file server parts are arriving (which will be home to the Perc 5/i controller) and after backing up all of my data I'm going to expand the current RAID5 array (5 500GB drives) to 8 500GB drives. I will also be running Arch Linux on this system, however it will be on it's own separate 320GB SATA drive.
I am familiar with alignment since I have an OCZ Vertex 2 60GB on my laptop, which I setup using 32/32 alignment. I'll check the wiki to see if the Revo is any different.
My main concern is just geting the optimal RAID settings.
Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-11-18 01:28:48)
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All right I finally got around to cloning my partitions from my existing array on the PERC 5/i and saving them to another disk, so now I can install them on the Revodrive.
I've set up the fakeraid using dmraid as per the wiki. I've created a GPT using gdisk with 3 partitions, however I would like to know how to create the filesystems using mkfs.ext2 and mkfs.ext4. Can anyone please explain how to do this?
The RAID0 array maps to /dev/dm-0 from /dev/mapper/sil-bgbgdjaddicb. I can view the GPT using:
gdisk -l /dev/mapper/sil-bgbgdjaddicbI have set up 100MB for boot, 15GB for root, and 59.4 for home. I also changed the type to Linux RAID using the 't' option.
EDIT:
I'm hung up at the point where I need to create the file systems. I can see the partitions using gdisk -l and parted, however I don't know how to use mkfs with GPTs and fakeraid.
Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-11-19 11:14:16)
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Hi!
If you have partitioned a fakeraid, then each partition has a unique name:
/dev/mapper/sil_somethingpart1
/dev/mapper/sil_somethingpart2
etc, you have to choose these names to format the partition.
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After enabling dmraid and using gdisk to creat a GPT will I see those partitions using:
#gdisk -l /dev/mapper/sil*Because after creating the GPT I still only saw the one entry....I'll have to install the disk and see what is showing.
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All right after assembling a server I've been working on I'm going to take another stab at this. I checked the partitions last night at a LAN party and they were only showing the pseudo controller, but then again I was slightly intoxicated...
We'll see. Any further advice is greatly appreciated.
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Nope, still only showing the partitions using gdisk -l or parted. If i try to create the filesystems using:
mkfs.ext2 /dev/mapper/sil-bgbgdjaddicb1it just says that it doesn't exist (which is doesn't show in /dev/mapper....)
How can it show in gdisk and parted, but not in the actual filesystem?
If I can't resolve this within a day or two I'm just going to return the damn thing and get an OCZ Vertex 2 80GB. I simply don't have time for this.
Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-11-21 07:39:29)
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Read the ssd wiki, in it, there's the partitioning section using fdisk, that worked for me.
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Read the ssd wiki, in it, there's the partitioning section using fdisk, that worked for me.
Ok, it's just that the wiki recommended using gdisk, which made sense to me. I'll try fdisk. Did you use heads = 32 and tracks = 32 for your boundaries?
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yes, 32,32 should be fine
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All right looks like this is going to work. I'm about to install grub.
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All right all of the partitions are showing, I was able to install my base system (plus dm_raid), then add the proper lines to config files, and grub failed to install (as it was supposed to).
I cannot, however, install grub manually. When I mount the filesystems needed for chroot, then initiate the final command:
#chroot /mnt /bin/bashI get 'no file or command found' referring to /bin/bash I'm assuming.
Almost there!
If I could only get GRUB installed I would have a working base system. Everything else installed just fine.
EDIT:
So far I've been able to get grub to recognize my partitions. I'm stuck on the part where you issue this command:
grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)I've already entered the geometry as it is reported at the top of cfdisk:
Heads: 32 Sectors per Track: 32 Cylinders: 152654
So at the grub prompt I entered:
grub>grub> geometry (hd0) 152654 32 32I installed yaourt and changed the symlinks for python and python-config......grub2-dmraid is building now.
Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-11-23 09:40:26)
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don't forget to mount the /boot partition before chrooting, and chroot /mountpoint should be fine, Then grub install should be working, put it into the mbr, so /dev/mapper/sil_something (without partition number) should be fine.
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don't forget to mount the /boot partition before chrooting, and chroot /mountpoint should be fine, Then grub install should be working, put it into the mbr, so /dev/mapper/sil_something (without partition number) should be fine.
I thought I mounted it when I chrooted...but I'll check again. Thanks for all of your help.
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I mounted boot before chrooting, even tried manually copying the grub lib files manually. I still get that stage1 is not found (using grub legacy)
Using grub2-dmraid when I run:
#grub-install /dev/mapper/dm-0 --no-floppyI get /sbin/grub-probe error: connot find a device for /boot/grub (is /dev mounted?)
Looking into /boot/grub it looks like all of the files are there, and menu.lst is configured, so I think all I'm lacking is the MBR......
Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-11-24 04:03:24)
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grub2 config file is grub.cfg, menu.lst is the legacy grub cfg file, please review the config file, look into the chroot wiki how and which partitions should be mounted before chrooting and after chroot run grub-install.
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I'll check out the chroot wiki, but I was just going on the fakeraid wiki. I'll try again.....thanks for the help.
Also boot, root, and home are all mounted by /arch/setup if you cat /etc/mtab.....
Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-11-24 06:18:06)
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Even though I mounted /dev and /boot before chrooting, it gave the error asking if dev was mounted. I mounted dev and boot again, and they show when I cat /etc/mtab.
I'm still getting an error though...
grub-probe is able to recognize the filesystems on dm-1, dm-2, and dm-3, however it cannot stat /dev/mapper/sil_bgbgdjaddicb (any of them).
Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-11-24 07:43:19)
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is /proc mounted before chroot?
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Yes I mounnted proc. Here is the mount procedure before chroot:
# mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
# mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
# mount -t sysfs none /mnt/sys
# chroot /mnt /bin/bashas per the fakeraid wiki. I've also tried mounting the different raid partitions to /mnt/boot and /mnt/root, however grub is still not able to find it.
I even booted into another Arch system, used dd to backup the MBR, used dd to backup the boot partition, then used dd in a live USB on the RAID drive and it still wouldn't boot.
Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-11-25 04:40:27)
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When I get back into town I'm going to install the Revo card in my server's PCI-E slot and try to install Arch from it. Maybe there is some sort of compatibility problem....though I doubt it.
This is just driving me crazy.
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At this point I'd like to try formatting a cheap USB drive and adding the boot partition to that, installing grub to that, then directing the root partition to the one on the Revo drive. Apparently someone at the OCZ forums had success this way.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum … post579013
I know it's not very elegant, but I simply don't have time for all of this.
It will also take quite a bit of annoying BIOS management....
Last edited by DarksideEE7 (2010-11-25 06:15:47)
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