[CentOS] Speaking of 3Ware/RAID/SATA/9550SX...

Wed Jul 12 18:00:20 UTC 2006
Mark Schoonover <schoon at amgt.com>

Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
> On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 at 10:16am, Mark Schoonover wrote
> 
>> I just built up a server running CentOS 4.3, and trying to boot from
>> a 3Ware 9550SX-16ML, 16 port card. This system has 9x500GB drives,
>> AMD Opteron, Tyan K8SD mobo and 1 GB of ram. I downloaded the latest
>> (9.3.0.4) driver from 3Ware, and after a couple of botched attempts,
>> I got CentOS installed. In my two botched attempts, the problem was
>> X hanging during the formatting of the drives, so I switched to
>> another virtual screen while formatting took place, and the system
>> didn't freeze.  
>> 
>> My problem now is the system won't boot. I know this is not exactly
>> a CentOS problem, I'm just hoping some kind sole would help me outta
>> this overworked fog I'm in. When the system tries to boot, the
>> cursor just sits there in the left corner of the screen flashing.
>> Nothing happens. I am probably missing something very simple, that
>> will cause me great public embarrassment, but I really don't care
>> right now. 
> 
> How is your array setup?  You can *not* boot from a device >4TiB.  On
> such a device, you must use a gpt disklabel and neither grub nor LILO
> support such.

My array size is 4.5TB. It's just one large single RAID5, so it's slightly
less than 4.5TB. So, what you're saying then is to either put a small single
HD to install CentOS, or make the array smaller than 4.5TB. I could easily
make something much smaller, say ~1TB, install CentOS on that. Once that's
finished, create the rest of the array as another array at the size that I
need. Could use LVM to stitch it all together...

I'll give this a try, thanks for the help.

Mark