Raid drivers for linux?

[Cesiumlifejacket]

I have a gigabyte 965p ds3 rev2.0 motherboard and a large partition containing windows 7 set up to use raid-0. I've left 20 gigs unallocated for a second operating system, and I think I'd like to use it to install Linux mint. I went to the motherboard website to try and download Linux raid drivers, and I found the following message:
Due to different Linux support condition provided by chipset vendors, please download Linux driver from chipset vendors' website or 3rd party website.

I googled "gigabyte 965p ds3 raid drivers Linux", and then tried to find the driver in Nvidia's website and got nothing.

Do some devices simply not support Linux?

[remoulder]

You are looking at this from a typical Windows user's perspective. Linux simply doesn't work the same way - you do not go and download drivers (in general) from websites they are (mostly) built in. For setting up raid, see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Raid as a starting point, then search both these and the ubuntu forums.

[mintuser]

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

[ronparent]

Addressing the basic issue, the originator if this thread has win7 installed on gifabyte MB in a raid 0 setup. Yes it is possible to install Mint 9 in a dual boot configuration. Until the developers get Ubuntu 10.04 (which underlies Mint 9) squared away you won't be able to install and Mint boot from the raid without some workarounds. Without intervention the installer won't format the partition you are trying to create to install to.

What you have to do is this 1) use win7 to reduce the size of an existing partition to make room for Mint 2) Use the mint 9 live cd to create a formatted (ext2, ext3, or ext4) target partition for the Mint install leaving unallocated space for a swap partition (this process is going to need more explanation). 3) Continue through and run the install from the live cd. In step 4 of 7 of the install, select manual partitioning (3rd choice in that step selection menu). In step 5 of 8 you should see the partition you previously created as one of the choices. Select it and hit the 'change' box at the bottom of the window. In the change window - choose the format type you had previously formated to, do NOT check the format box, select '/' as the mount point. 4) Now continue, responding as needed for each step. 5) In step 8 of 8 you will have to explicitly select the location for the boot loader to be able to boot to the install, So you hit the box called 'advanced' and in the advanced screen you use a drop box with to select the raid (the main raid set, not a partition) as the location to write the grub boot loader. This will unfortunately overwrite the win7 boot loader but grub should configure itself to find both win and Mint. For Ubuntu users this last step creates a 'fatal error' (fixable). When I installed Mint 9 using this process the last step worked fine and I was able to boot to both mint and Win 7.

Now to expand on 2) above. You will be using gparted the standard partitioner to create a target partition. For some reason calling it directly thru the gui will bring it up without access to the raid for partitioning. To by-pass that you will open a terminal in the live cd and enter the command to open it as such: sudo gparted /dev/mapper/<YourRaidArrayName>
You will find that name in /dev/mapper in your live cd virtual file system (it is probably the first one listed, not ended with a partition number). Once gparted is opened you find and select the unallocated space you had prepared with win 7 and hit the create button. You simply slide the end of the box back to leave space for the swap and hit the checkmark to apply your change to the drive. In the space remaining designate a swap. When you close gparted you will be ready for the install.

Definitely look at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Raid before you start so that you have some idea of how a raid operates, Good luck.

[Cesiumlifejacket]

I tried following your directions, Ronparent, But mint seems unable to process my raid setup properly. First I followed your directions exactly: I went to the terminal and typed in

Code: Select all

sudo gparted /dev/mapper/jmicron_GRAID

which opened up Gparted, but there appeared to be no partition selected because the entire window was grayed out. The terminal gave me some error message about how jmicron_GRAID was not a valid entry, but its location was exactly where you (and a tutorial I found online) said it should be. I went through the file system and double-clicked the file and got the exactly same results as what I got when opening from the terminal (a grayed out gparted window with no visible partitions).

Thank you all for your continued help with this problem.

[ronparent]

Sorry i'm so late responding - I don't check this forum often. What is listed in /dev/mapper/? 'jmicron_GRAID' doesn't appear to be a normally expected name for a raid synbolic link. In any event all of the existing partitions on that raid should also be listed.

Since I wrote the posting you followed, I have discovered through a bug report I had filed, that gparted in mint 9 was not distributed with kpartx, a necessary adjunct needed to process raid drives. You can quickly install it with synaptics within a live cd session. Gparted should then reveal the raid and all of its partitions. If it does, you can then start the install from the same session (the kpartx install is only temporary for that session) and ithe install should proceed normally.

[Cesiumlifejacket]

Your timing is fine; I'm in no hurry, and late help is infinitely better than no help

I just fired up the bootcd and installed kpartex, and gparted is finally recognizing my raid setup! however, when I try to install I get as far as step 3, and when I click forward to step four I get the following message:

ERROR!!!

Could not stat device /dev/mapper/jmicron_GRAID- no such file or directory.

whether I click RETRY or CANCEL, i get the same message after that:

Ubi-partman crashed: Ubi-partman failed with exit code 10.

I'm not sure whether or not this helps, but I went to the system log and found this:

Code: Select all

Jul 28 21:40:38 mint os-prober: Device '/dev/mapper/jmicron_GRAID*[0-9]' does not exist; skipping
Jul 28 21:40:38 mint ubiquity[3956]: debconffilter_done: ubi-timezone (current: ubi-timezone)
Jul 28 21:40:38 mint ubiquity[3956]: Step_before = stepLocation
Jul 28 21:40:39 mint ubiquity[3956]: log-output -t ubiquity setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout us -option 
Jul 28 21:40:39 mint ubiquity[3956]: switched to page console_setup
Jul 28 21:40:45 mint ubiquity: Your console font configuration will be updated the next time your system
Jul 28 21:40:45 mint ubiquity: boots. If you want to update it now, run 'setupcon' from a virtual console.
Jul 28 21:40:45 mint ubiquity[3956]: log-output -t ubiquity setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout us -option 
Jul 28 21:40:45 mint ubiquity[3956]: debconffilter_done: ubi-console-setup (current: ubi-console-setup)
Jul 28 21:40:45 mint ubiquity[3956]: Step_before = stepKeyboardConf
Jul 28 21:40:45 mint activate-dmraid: Serial ATA RAID disk(s) detected. If this was bad, boot with 'nodmraid'.
Jul 28 21:40:45 mint activate-dmraid: Enabling dmraid support.
Jul 28 21:40:45 mint dmraid-activate: ERROR: Cannot retrieve RAID set information for jmicron_GRAID           
Jul 28 21:40:45 mint dmraid-activate: ERROR: Cannot retrieve RAID set information for jmicron_GRAID           
Jul 28 21:40:57 mint ubiquity[3956]: debconffilter_done: ubi-partman (current: ubi-partman)
Jul 28 21:40:57 mint ubiquity[3956]: dbfilter_handle_status: ('ubi-partman', 10)
Jul 28 21:41:03 mint ubiquity[3956]: dbfilter_handle_status: response -7
Jul 28 21:41:03 mint ubiquity: debconf: DbDriver "targetdb": could not open /target/var/cache/debconf/config.dat
Jul 28 21:41:03 mint ubiquity[3956]: log-output -t ubiquity debconf-copydb configdb targetdb -p ^console-setup/ --config=Name:targetdb --config=Driver:File --config=Filename:/target/var/cache/debconf/config.dat
Jul 28 21:41:03 mint ubiquity: debconf: DbDriver "targetdb": could not open /target/var/cache/debconf/config.dat
Jul 28 21:41:03 mint ubiquity[3956]: log-output -t ubiquity debconf-copydb configdb targetdb -p ^oem-config/ --config=Name:targetdb --config=Driver:File --config=Filename:/target/var/cache/debconf/config.dat

I googled exit code 10 and didn't find much of anything.

Off to try something in windows real quick, I'll be back soon.

EDIT- false alarm with the raid recognition in gparted; gparted is recognising partitions, but only on one of the hard drives, and that's not much good with a striped system. I'm still calling this progress because before kpartx I couldn't see anything, but I'm far from done with my RAID battle.

[DrHu]

Do some devices simply not support Linux?

It is equally true that some devices do not support windows OS; in fact Linux in general has more device support than any other OS, from older to newer

Correct: it is the well known Windows + OEM lock on product availability or limited licensing or commercial self-interest, that prevents an OEM from supporting every vendor Linux and Apple included
--you will occasionally come across a similar lack of support in the Apple OS-X world, although, and despite the fact that there are likely many more Linux than Apple OS-X users, Apple tends to be getting more support than Linux
--perhaps, that is because Linux is a true general purpose OS, not tied to particular hardware or OEM agreements, aka Open Source and transparent

Perhaps there is still an issue with that particular chipset..
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=678745