[SOLVED] Installing Arch with RAID

Nero86 · 2015-04-20 23:26:28

Greetings Arch community. I would like to ask for some assistance.

I'm trying to install arch on an Acer Aspire M1640 desktop, also to dual boot with windows vista. It has an Nvidia MCP73 mobo with a SATA RAID controller (rev a2). And an SCSi drive.

I'm guessing that's a hardware RAID chip.

I installed vista, and then tried installing arch (MBR partition tables with cfdisk + grub) without paying much mind to this. After following the beginner's guide, I get this error when trying to boot arch:

ERROR: device 'UUID=<uuidx>' not found.  Skipping fsck.
ERROR: Unable to find root device 'UUID=<uuidx>'. 
	Type 'exit' to try and continue booting sh:  can't access tty; job control turned off
[rootfs /]#

fstab has the / and swap entries I created, and the UUID for the root matches the error message.

Vista still loads fine from grub.

I'm only using one hard disk. I'm guessing I'm getting that error because of the computer's RAID system.

My question is, could you guys help point me into the right direction for a guide on installing arch in this circumstance?
After some researching, I ran into 'ZFS', though I'm somewhat lost.

I'll try to provide details, though I'm not sure what you would ask for:

lsmod: http://sprunge.us/BbJc
lshw: http://sprunge.us/WeVd

My appreciation in advance.

Last edited by Nero86 (2015-04-25 04:26:09)

jasonwryan · 2015-04-20 23:34:26

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#RAID

Nero86 · 2015-04-25 04:23:37

Came back to state that I found a solution to my problem, and how I fixed it.

As a little bit of background information, I was actually having this same trouble three years ago, by trying to install arch on the same desktop. This time, I decided not to give up.

@jasonwryan I appreciate your support, and reading the link you sent me was informative. I was a little wary of using it however. My computer is RAID capable, however I have it disabled in the BIOS. Being uninformed, I wasn't sure if this made a difference to the installation, or if I was missing kernel parameters, or modules that ensured the OS was able to boot from the harddrive device.

Originally, I was going to post every step I made when installing Arch. It turns out I did something very wrong right from the very start.

On booting Arch from the installation disk, my display would blank out. A 'quick' google search later and I found out that it's easily remedied by appending "nomodeset" when booting.

Yet the screen would remain on, the environment still wouldn't load, and instead hang. My big mistake was to again cut corners and do a lazy google search, where the first result would clearly read "Try appending acpi=off and see if that works". It did, and I was able to follow through the installation process.

So in the process of finding a solution to the error in my OP, I ventured off the course of learning in-depth about RAID, and tried putting my effort in learning about the computer's ACPI.

I guess it turns out, that the option 'acpi=off', should not be used unless debugging, and deductively solving the problem with the start-up process. Because it load with that option, it meant the problem had something to do with the ACPI. I guess using that option is not good and could potentially ruin the system, if not cause lots of other problems down the road.

My BIOS was out of date, and cautiously (doing thorough research, and making sure I understood everything) I flashed the BIOS to the newer version from the manufacturers website. I learned a lot about the ACPI, and have it set in the BIOS to play nice with Linux. I also used acpi_osi="Linux" instead of the former option.

This indeed made a difference, and both me and my system are very happy for it.

Anyways, I guess that's my newbie blog for this thread. One of the biggest things I learned, is that there is going to be a lot of learning involved now that it's up to me to maintain this system. My goal is to get right down deep in understanding every nuance of this thing, and have fun building an effecient, minimalistic set-up that is secure, and functional for my unique needs.

jasonwryan · 2015-04-25 05:08:26

Nero86 wrote:

My goal is to get right down deep in understanding every nuance of this thing, and have fun building an effecient, minimalistic set-up that is secure, and functional for my unique needs.

You are going to fit right in here. Welcome to Arch.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-04-20 23:26:28

[SOLVED] Installing Arch with RAID

#2 2015-04-20 23:34:26

Re: [SOLVED] Installing Arch with RAID

#3 2015-04-25 04:23:37

Re: [SOLVED] Installing Arch with RAID

#4 2015-04-25 05:08:26

Re: [SOLVED] Installing Arch with RAID

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