Windows XP on SiI3112 RAID-0, Gentoo on IDE drive.

freshy98

Here is the deal:

Atm I start Windows XP Pro from my RAID-0 configuration which is on the SiI3112 SATA controller. BIOS starts from SATA first (after floppy) and a IDE drive is hooked up on the Primary IDE controller as Master.

I want to install Gentoo on that IDE drive but I am a bit conserned about the dual boot part since there is still no good RAID support in the 2.6.x kernels, and I don't really like running 2.4.x kernels again.
From what I've read, Grub is a no go (which is a shame) so I have to use LILO. I could start from the IDE drive with LILO and start Windows XP, but there would still be the RAID problem I think.
Or, can I use boot.ini from Windows XP to start Gentoo from it's boot menu?

Any recommendations would be highly appreciated!
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Mac Pro single quad 2.8GHz, 6GB RAM, 8800GT. MacBook. Plus way too many SUN/Cobatl/SGI and a lonely Alpha.

the_sphynx · Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:43 am Post subject:

I actually just setup a new Dell OptiPlex GX270 with an SATA drive and one IDE drive. I have the Gentoo install on the IDE drive and XP Pro on the SATA drive with no problems. You will have to use LILO as GRUB craps out on boot when referencing the SATA drive. As far as the RAID goes the 2.6 kernel should only see the SATA drives and probably not the controller, but just compile the RAID support into the kernel and see what you get...
I will post my LILO config tomorow when I get into the office and on that box.
The config is pretty tricky to get the XP to boot because in my config (if I remember right) I had to setup=/dev/sda1 to place lilo on the sata mbr and then point the windows image to /dev/sda or something like that...like I said it was tricky but it all works fine now. Words of encouragement are that I have it working and it works very well. I am using the 2.6.7-mm-r2 kernel to boot, but I have booted and run the 2.6.5 kernel on it as well.
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freshy98 · Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:02 am Post subject:

I know that single SATA drives work, I ran that way before, but RAID is another story.
But I would like to see your lilo config though. Maybe it can give me idea's.
_________________
Mac Pro single quad 2.8GHz, 6GB RAM, 8800GT. MacBook. Plus way too many SUN/Cobatl/SGI and a lonely Alpha.

the_sphynx · Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004 4:26 pm Post subject:

Here is the lilo.conf I said that I would post. I hope that this helps you.

freshy98 · Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2004 10:57 pm Post subject:

ok, but still.. you have 1 SATA drive and 1 IDE drive, right?
I have 2 SATA drives in RAID 0 and 1 IDE drive.

in linux the drives are shown as /dev/hda for the IDE drive and /dev/hde and /dev/hdg for the SATA drives. 2.6.x does not work well with SATA RAID 0 on a SiI3112 chip.

atm I am trying bootpart and I have extracted the bootsector from the IDE drive and placed that on my C: drive (the RAID 0 config) and edited my boot.ini to load that bootsector. however, when I select to use it in the NT bootloader menu I get thrown back to the menu every time. it does not load Grub. (I decided to use grub here since lilo odid not work too)
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Mac Pro single quad 2.8GHz, 6GB RAM, 8800GT. MacBook. Plus way too many SUN/Cobatl/SGI and a lonely Alpha.

cyrillic · Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2004 12:28 am Post subject:

As far as the BIOS is concerned, the RAID0 array acts like a single drive. When you have the BIOS configured to boot from the single IDE drive, GRUB will see the drives like this :

(hd0) single IDE drive - Gentoo
(hd1) SATA RAID0 array - Windows

You can easily dual-boot by configuring grub.conf like this.

freshy98 · Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 11:27 am Post subject:

Do'h! Why didn't I think of this...
GRUB has nothing to do with linux because linux is booted after GRUB is loaded. In a rough way.

I will try it out once I get home again.

Thnx for the thought!

cyrillic · Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 1:46 pm Post subject:

freshy98 · Posted: Tue Jun 15, 2004 1:56 pm Post subject:

freshy98 · Posted: Sun Jun 27, 2004 10:17 pm Post subject:

Finally found the time to try it out, and it works perfectly!
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Mac Pro single quad 2.8GHz, 6GB RAM, 8800GT. MacBook. Plus way too many SUN/Cobatl/SGI and a lonely Alpha.

tacker · Posted: Tue Oct 05, 2004 9:01 pm Post subject:

Fucking great. This helped me a lot, too.