10.04 Beta1 Raid Controller Installation Issues

[Nick Pavlica]

Hi Phillip,

On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 8:41 AM, Phillip Susi <psusi at cfl.rr.com> wrote:
> On 3/24/2010 6:14 PM, Nick Pavlica wrote:
>> All,
>>   I'm currently working on a new project and would like to utilize
>> Ubuntu 10.04.  However,  I'm having issues with both the built in RAID
>> controller an AMD SP5100, and an add on controller which is an  LSI
>> MegaRaid 9240-8i.  In my testing I was able to install CentOS 5.4 on
>> both controllers out of the box, but haven't been able to install
>> Ubuntu 10.04 Beta 1 server or desktop using either controller.  What's
>> the best course of action for getting the drivers for these
>> controllers added to Ubuntu 10.04.  I did send an official request to
>> LSI's support staff to consider supporting Ubuntu officially, but
>> haven't received a response yet.
>
> There are no drivers; they are fake raid controllers.  This means they
> are really just standard AHCI sata controllers with bios extensions and
> Windows drivers that handle the raid in software.  The dmraid utility
> detects the metadata the bios leaves on the disks and configures the
> kernel to perform the correct software raiding.  AMD has not released
> their specifications so it is not yet supported.

I understand that the on-board RAID is fake RAID and didn't plan to use it
long term.  I just wanted to mention the experience I had with that
chip set during my initial testing.
Interestingly, CentOS 5.4 was able to install using the Fake RAID
chipset where Ubuntu 10.04B1 was unable to see any of the drives.


  >The LSI should work.

Unfortunately,  I haven't gotten it to work yet, but I'm still working
on the issue.  I would really like to see native support for the newer
generation of RAID controllers like the 9240 find there way into 10.04
before it's released.  However, I'm not exactly sure what needs
to be done on that front.  Once again, CentOS 5.4 loaded a MegaRaid
SAS driver for this card and the OS installed out of the box.

> The best thing to do if you are not dual booting with Windows is to
> disable the fake raid support entirely and install Ubuntu using the
> alternate install cd and set up normal software raid.  It works much
> better than the fake raid.

Where primarily a nix* shop, so you won't find many Windows
installations here, especially on servers.  Hopefully we don't never
have to :)
I'm going to do what I can to get the LSI functioning, I would really
like to have a decent HW Raid controller in this server.

Thanks!
--Nick