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I have been trying to install Redhat Linux on either of the SATA
controllers for this Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI motherboard but none are
recognizing my hard disks or the RAID controller. I have installed
Win2K3 on another one of these mobos without any issues but I would
like to install Redhat Linux 8.0 on another since it uses a faster SATA
II controller via Silicon Image (SiI 3114) controller. I have a current
Linux RH 8.0 production server that is not fault-tolerance that I need
to migrate to a RAID system.

I downloaded the beta drivers from controller's website:
http://www.siliconimage.com/support/downloadcenter.aspx

I used "SiI 3114" from the drop-down menu and downloaded the linux
drivers from top down for 64-bit AMD. The drivers that seems to be
correct is the:

Driver 12/1/2004 9250 KB SiI3114: Serial ATA (SATA) 64-bit Linux
RAID Driver - Beta ZIP download.

Extracted all files and I followed all the documentation for Linux RH
8.0 "new install". It instructs to use "linux dd" during boot of RH
CD1, it attempts to load drivers but during Disk Partitioning Setup
from the options of:

"Automatically Partition",
"Manually partition with Disk Druid",
"Manually partition with fdisk (experts only)"

I choose "Automatically Partition" and everytime I select NEXT, I get
the following error:

--| No Drives Found |--
An error has occurred - no valid devices were found on
which to create new file systems. Please check your
hardware for the cause of this problem.
OK

Driver Info:
[SiI SATARaid Linux device driver ver 1.0.0.20 Release]

Driver Files IMG: [distribution]sii6514.img
Driver Files TGZ: [distribution]sii6514_rhdd.tgz
Driver Dates: 11/06/03
Features:
1. Support RedHat 7.3/8.0/9.0 and SuSE 8.1/8.2

I did created Floppy (drivers) with the following:
dd if=redhat_sii6514.img of=/dev/fd0

I am suspecting error/issue with driver disk although it seems to try
to load drivers and displays:

---------------------------
--| Loading |--
Loading sii6514 drivers...
---------------------------

After specifying "linux dd" or "linux expert" this Loading of driver
occurs about 2 times but probably doesn't load correctly or just
doesn't work when attempting to partition the drive/RAID array.

Has anyone been able to get around this or been able to load RH Linux
on any controller using SATA II (300 mbps) controller???

Please respond if you've experienced any of this or gotten passed this
point that I'm currently stuck on.

-Regards,

Gibran
gmarquez@indyme.com

gmarquez wrote:

> Please respond if you've experienced any of this or gotten passed this
> point that I'm currently stuck on.

See my reply;

Re: Install on SATA RAID on Gigabyte GA-K8N motherboard.
Groups:linux.redhat


--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- B. Franklin, 1759

gmarquez wrote:
> I have been trying to install Redhat Linux on either of the SATA
> controllers for this Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI motherboard but none are
> recognizing my hard disks or the RAID controller. I have installed
> Win2K3 on another one of these mobos without any issues but I would
> like to install Redhat Linux 8.0 on another since it uses a faster SATA
> II controller via Silicon Image (SiI 3114) controller. I have a current
> Linux RH 8.0 production server that is not fault-tolerance that I need
> to migrate to a RAID system.
>
Red Hat Linux 8 has been obsolete, manufacturer-discontinued, unsupported,
...., for so long, I am surprised it even has support for SATA. Does it?

Whatever prompted you to use such an obsolete distribution in the first
place? You will need so many security updates, at least, that if you install
them, it will no longer be recognizable as RHL8 anymore. When you start
trying to put those updates in, you will start to be crushed under the
avalanche of dependencies. I would never attempt it.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 16:15:00 up 49 days, 10:08, 3 users, load average: 3.30, 3.27, 3.06

Trust me I hear what your saying in RH8 reaching its End Of Life. Issue
here is that we have a production server currently running on RH 8.0
which our developers have developed software for our customers on these
systems. So my job as MIS is to ensure that the systems are running and
fault-tolerant.

I have raised this concern about it no longer being supported to some
of the developers. I've explained that they need to migrate those
services onto systems that are still supported so we as MIS can
continue to update them as needed as far as hardware goes. I suggested
going to something like Fedora or Enterprise. I haven't heard much
else...

But all documentation from http://www.siimage.com/ according to this
distribution appears to have been okay installing and tells you all
steps to follow. Am I the exception here, or was there test unique in
some way? I did follow it step-by-step but without any luck.

Seems like my other option may be to go simply with IDE RAID, but SATA
should be way to go here....

I'll advise on any news.
Thanks!

-Gibran

Thanks Lenard, I'll follow-up there.

"gmarquez" <gmarquez@indyme.com> wrote in message
news:1123091309.014356.195610@g43g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
>I have been trying to install Redhat Linux on either of the SATA
> controllers for this Gigabyte GA-K8N Ultra-SLI motherboard but none are
> recognizing my hard disks or the RAID controller. I have installed
> Win2K3 on another one of these mobos without any issues but I would
> like to install Redhat Linux 8.0 on another since it uses a faster SATA
> II controller via Silicon Image (SiI 3114) controller. I have a current
> Linux RH 8.0 production server that is not fault-tolerance that I need
> to migrate to a RAID system.

You really, really need to update your basic OS. RedHat 8.0 is not only a
2.4 kernel, but it's been end-of-life for quite some time now.

> After specifying "linux dd" or "linux expert" this Loading of driver
> occurs about 2 times but probably doesn't load correctly or just
> doesn't work when attempting to partition the drive/RAID array.
>
> Has anyone been able to get around this or been able to load RH Linux
> on any controller using SATA II (300 mbps) controller???

I've used a number of weird SATA controllers, but I'd really start with a
more recent OS release and kernel. If the drivers are only available for
RedHat 8.0, perhaps they've already been integrated into the 2.6 kernel for
Fedora Core 4?

gmarquez wrote:
> Trust me I hear what your saying in RH8 reaching its End Of Life. Issue
> here is that we have a production server currently running on RH 8.0
> which our developers have developed software for our customers on these
> systems. So my job as MIS is to ensure that the systems are running and
> fault-tolerant.

I would have said your job includes educating the ignorant, actually, as
well. But since you're into old software, Promise at one time made an
adaptor for IDE drives which allowed you to put two drives into RAID-1
off a single cable connection. So your controller thought it had one
drive, but in truth it had an itty-bitty RAID-1 array.

Several companies make a box of IDE drives which looks like a single
SCSI drive (or small number of same in JBOD) when in reality it's RAID
of some flavor. This allows you to use an obsolete but supported SCSI
controller from the last millenium.

Final thought, you could build the kernel as UML and run it under a
newer kernel, use vmware (maybe, netBSD works), or put the hardware on a
modern machine with proper backup and use nbd or NFS for the file system.

I would tell management that RH8.0 is like Win98, and that it's time to
move on. If your developers wrote code which is so non-portable that it
won't run with a recompile you have a non-technical problem, baaad
practices.

--
bill davidsen
SBC/Prodigy Yorktown Heights NY data center
http://newsgroups.news.prodigy.com