Onboard RAID and Ubuntu Install - Why Does it See Separate Disks?

Question

Ok, I have never tried to install Ubuntu to a RAID setup before.

I am running a Supermicro X8DT3-LN4F motherboard with onboard Adaptec RAID controller with six 160GB drives attached to form a RAID10. Status of the RAID set is OPTIMAL.

I try to install Ubuntu 9.04 server, however when I get to disks detection phase, Ubuntu reads all 6 drives as separate 160GB drives instead of a single RAID 10 480GB set.

I tried going ahead and installing to one drive just to see what would happen, and as expected, not much.

Searching around I can't seem to find anybody who has experienced this sort of thing.

On other systems where I was using a different kind of raid controller, I never experienced this. The raid set always came up as a single drive. But I was never trying to install Ubuntu to the raid sets in the past.

I have already put in an email to tech support, but I wanted to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes here at serverfault :)

Can anybody tell me what is going wrong here?

Solution 1

Hate to say it.. but the Supermicro X8DT3-LN4F and all their new motherboards don't have Ubuntu support. The only drivers available are for RH or Suse.

On a side note... the onboard controller that comes with most motherboards is also called a 'fake raid' by some. There is more details on this provided in Ubuntu help area:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto

The end result was that I needed to drop the onboard raid and stick to native sata.

If I want RAID in the future I will need to buy a card.

Hope this helps

Solution 2

i've taken a look at mb specs. have you by any chance connected disk to ICH10R ports ?

what you describe sounds very much like there is soft-raid not a 'real raid' in use. those works fine with windows but do 'heavy lifting' [ xoring for raid5 ] on your main cpu instead of dedicated controller.

Comments

[Admin]

Additional information - Ubuntu 9.04 cannot read ICH10R raid properly. I found reference to this in bug reports. I am going to try kramic and see if it has more support for newer chipsets vs. jaunty.

[JonathanLIVE]

There are only 1 set of ports on the motherboard.. six ports.. then with the bios settings you can specify either None, Intel, or Adaptec ICH10 raid. I tried Intel first and had the same sort of thing roughly happen.

[JonathanLIVE]

Yeah.. I took a look and I only see support for Redhat and Suse in terms of drivers they have available... looking at the legend.. I don't understand why 32bit would be supported and not 64bit. :( After the other answer I looked a little more into ICH10R and ubuntu and I found out I was not alone.. I have found something and am about to test it.. will report results soon.

[derobert]

Just use Linux software RAID. Especially for RAID10, hardware RAID really can't help you (unless its really expensive and has a battery)