[CentOS] Dell mirror raid boot problems

Wed Apr 29 02:43:47 UTC 2009
John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com>

Gregory P. Ennis wrote:
> To make things as clear as I can this is a DELL XPS Gen 2 Series a 32
> bit machine using an i386 Centos OS 5.2 that was automatically upgraded
> to 5.3 by yum.
>   

oh, we thought you said a SERVER, such as a Dell PowerEdge, so we went 
down the wrong bunnytrail :)

"XPS Gen 2" could refer to either a Inspiron XPS laptop, or a desktop 
XPS Gen 2.    If its a P4, then its likely the desktop, as the laptop 
used the Pentium-M.

> The RAID controller appears to be on the mother board to me.  The CPU is
> an Intel Pentium 4 3.00GHz.    BIOS version of A02.
>
> In the bios I can turn on RAID on but when the system boots I get a grub
> prompt.  The only way to get the system to boot is to turn off the RAID
> configuration and boot to one drive.  
>
> I have not seen anything regarding PERC.  The SATA drives are connected
> directly to the motherboard.
>
> I have still not been able to make it work as RAID.
>
> Thanks to everyone for your help.  This is my first RAID controller.
>   
no, its not.  its not a raid controller.  its 'BIOS raid' aka 'fake raid'

BIOS fake raid such as that isn't supported by Linux, instead, set the 
controller for JBOD/ATA mode, and use the built in MD driver mirroring 
in Linux.

see the comments here under "SATA",
http://linux.dell.com/storage.shtml#sata

the Inspiron XPS Gen 2 laptop has the same ICH6 southbridge IO chip as 
the Precision Workstation this page mentions, while the Desktop XPS Gen 
2 had the previous version ICH5