Originally Posted by kmkale
I got my Tyan k8w to work with the sata disk after a fashion by inserting the drivers during install by doing linux dd.
Also you may find the following usefull for installing the mbr. It workes for me on a 64bit amd bord from asus but did not work for this dual procesor tyan k8w board.
Here goes............................ you can ignore the raid stuff if you dont want to use it.
Overall approach - Here are the high-level steps to get the beast running smoothly:
1) Install FC3, creating bootable RAID and second RAID LVM group,
2) Partially complete GRUB install,
3) Complete RAID install,
4) Complete GRUB install,
5) Test, test, and more test
DETAILS:
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1) INSTALL FC3, CREATING BOOTABLE RAID AND SECOND RAID LVM GROUP. Keys to success: both drive pairs must be partitioned exactly the same, with the appropriate partitions matched into RAID1 arrays. On the primary bootable array, I reserved 100MB for use with md0 (on both drives), 2GB for swap (both drives), and allocated the remaining space as md1. On the second drive pair, I allocated all the space to md2. I then mapped /boot to md0, and joined md1 and md2 into a LVM volume group, and mapped / to the new volume group.
At completion of the install, I tried a reboot, and the machine froze at GRUB.
2) PARTIALLY COMPLETE GRUB INSTALL - keys to success: boot from your CD using "linux rescue" option to get a command prompt. Change root to the newly created system (>> chroot /mnt/sysimage), and run grub. Below are the commands I used (you would substitute for your first SATA hard disk - mine was /dev/sda)
grub
> device (hd0) /dev/sda
> root (hd0,0)
> setup (hd0)
These commands make the first hard disk of your RAID array bootable. However, the second can't be made bootable until RAID is up and running properly. See step 3.
3) COMPLETE RAID INSTALL - Keys to success: boot the new hard disk, and check to see that your RAID arrays are working properly, using > cat /proc/mdstat.
[root@jigsaw ~]# cat /proc/mdstat
Personalities : [raid1]
md1 : active raid1 sdb2[1] sda2[0]
33945280 blocks [2/2] [UU]
md2 : active raid1 sdc1[0] sdd1[1]
156288256 blocks [2/2] [UU]
md0 : active raid1 sdb1[0] sda1[1]
104320 blocks [2/2] [UU]
This shows a properly working array. Note md0 - both partitions are listed. My first time through, I found that I was missing the other half of my RAID pair. SO - I needed to add them "hot" and rebuild the RAID. Here is the trick:
>> mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdb1
This will "hot add" /dev/sdb1 back into /dev/mdO and rebuild the RAID pair. For larger drives, this syncing make take a while. You can check the status with "cat /proc/mdstat"
4) COMPLETE THE GRUB INSTALL - Keys to success: once the /boot partition is properly synced (see step 3), then you can tell GRUB to boot from either disk. Let's repeat step two, activating the MBR for the first partition on each drive of the RAID array on /boot.
grub
> device (hd0) /dev/sda
> root (hd0,0)
> setup (hd0)
> device (hd1) /dev/sdb
> root (hd1,0)
> setup (hd1)
If you try this without completing the RAID install, you'll get "ERROR 15: file not found". Why? the /boot partition isn't properly mirrored across the disks.
5) TEST, TEST, and TEST - Keys to success: patience. a) power down, b) unplug a drive, c) power up and watch the bios, d) ensure you get a boot, e) check to see if all data is accessible, f) power down, g) replug the drive, h) power up and watch the bios, i) rebuild the array using "mdadm /dev/mdx --add /dev/sdyy"