need some help le sigh

[frollo]

alright i'm back trying yet another version of Ultimate. i started with 1.3, then 1.4 various versions of regular ubuntu but never got the system to work how i wanted in the past. it is now today and support is much better on the hardware i have and the things i want to use and so i'm back.

now here is the issue i'm having

i downloaded 1.9 (obviously) 64 bit edition and that went fine (yay) now i go to install and it shows me two hard drives, so i say ok i realize it isn't seeing my raid 0 array. I then searched and found that i needed dmraid so i installed that just fine and tried to install again. Now it sees my array properly and i proceed to setup the partitions. This is on my predominantly windows machine that has two 250 gig wd hard drives in a raid 0 array. i set aside 4gig for swap, and the other 45gig for linux under ext3. now here is where the fun starts. i hit next and it lets me proceed all they way through to where it installs (doesn't have a central timezone location but i can deal with that) it gets ready to finish partitioning the drives and start installing when it fails and says it can't create the partition. I end up spending more time trying to get the partitions setup with various ways within the live cd. I used the partition thing included with the install, the partition manager in the live cd, tried doing it in windows, and finally resorted to using a herins boot disk to set it up that way. I created and formatted my swap and system partition using the boot disk and then went back into linux thinking i should be good to go since my partitions are already setup. I WAS WRONG AGAIN! now it gets all the way through says that it still can't modify that partition. so my guess is that it can't for some reason write to those partitions. i don't know if it can't talk to my raid controler properly or what. i have seen other versions of other raid solutions but i need to use hardware raid as i cannot jack up my array (has all my other os's on it).

so in the end i need help getting linux to be able to read and interact properly with these partitions, if anybody has any clues i would appreciate it.

[DaddyX3]

I have not installed Ultimate Edition to raid 0 yet, but I know that TheeMahn has. Did you look into the How-To section on understanding a raid array? Obviously you know about raid arrays or you would not have them already - I understand that, but maybe not the Linux way? I don't know. I have a raid 0 set installed but not utilizing it for the OS itself (I know, stupid huh?). I utilize mdadm instead of dmraid. Your issue might very well lie in the fact that dmraid is not part of the .iso (1.9) and therefore upon installing dmraid will only install to ram and I don't know how well that will work for you. I would suggest trying to use mdadm instead. PLEASE read my post at the end of TheeMahn's instructions. This will save your raid array from getting over written. You need not -assemble anything, cause you already have a raid set assembled, and using this will wipe your disc clean ... so be careful!!
Unfortunately mdadm is not part of the .iso on 1.9 either! I just checked. I do know that 1.6 has it installed though.... one of my favorites. It is based off of Gusty though.

If you get it rolling, please post back for all of us!

[frollo]

thanks for the reply. i did indeed see that post however i'm looking over it again. i was under the impression that if you tried using software raid it would jack stuff up. i am thinking that the compiled vesrsion of dmraid on the repository isn't properly supporting my evga 680i nforce raid controler. i attempted to dl and compile a new version myself but i am a bit of a linux newbie and i finally made it through getting it compiled and what not at 1 in the morning before my darn live session locked up on me. i just turned in and went to bed. since then though i have installed it with vmware fusion on my mac in 64bit mode wew hew. now i'm trying to get it to install the vmware tools properly which is being problematic. So i will keep trying to get it going on my desktop and i will need to look more into mdadm more

[DaddyX3]

thanks for the reply. i did indeed see that post however i'm looking over it again. i was under the impression that if you tried using software raid it would jack stuff up. i am thinking that the compiled vesrsion of dmraid on the repository isn't properly supporting my evga 680i nforce raid controler. i attempted to dl and compile a new version myself but i am a bit of a linux newbie and i finally made it through getting it compiled and what not at 1 in the morning before my darn live session locked up on me. i just turned in and went to bed. since then though i have installed it with vmware fusion on my mac in 64bit mode wew hew. now i'm trying to get it to install the vmware tools properly which is being problematic. So i will keep trying to get it going on my desktop and i will need to look more into mdadm more

Yes, sorry I'm not better at it I wish I could give you all the answers, but I'm no pro at this. I can tell you however that using 'fake raid' and hardware raid - you would need to turn off the hardware raid in order for it to get along. I don't think you should have much of a problem though. I don't think its going to do anything to your raid set. the raid set is already made. I made an error above in my statement about using --assemble command, you would have to do this, but not use: 'sudo mdadm --create's this will destroy your raid set. --assemble is fine, but in reality it is not even needed. If you install mdadm and run the command sudo fdisk -l it is already recognized as being a set. then you just have to create a directory for it to mount to and then mount -a .
Doing all this upon install is something I'm a rookie at though, so keep me posted on your success or failures