ASUS A8N-SLI Delux

[auspsx68]

I have an Asus A8N-SLI Delux motherboard with an AMS64 x 3200 CPU and 1 GIG of ram. I am trying to build a server using gentoo without any success. I want to use the Sli 3114 SATA Raid controller to raid 1 (2 x 80GIG WD SATA drives) I am using the gentoo 2005-1_x86_64 live cd. The cd boots and finds the sata drives but as two drives, I believe that this is fine and will be rectified after correct compliation of the lernel. The install goes perfect all the way to the end. I complle the SLI SATA drives into the kernel and all. The problem is when I reboot all I see on the screen is 99 99. How can I overcome this and get gentoo to work fine. Some additional information I am using reiserfs for the boot and root partitions and grub for the boot loader as lilo is masked out.

[mudrii]

Why Sil RAID is same as soft RAID and is SATA I generation use Nforce4 that is soft RAID too but have at least SATA II with NCQ support.
What you mean 99.99 > ?
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www.gentoo.ro

[auspsx68]

Thanks for the reply I will change to the nforce4 controller and give that a go. The 99 99 this is what is displayed on the screen when I attempt to reboot after install. Can you advise on how to install Gentoo on this board using the nforce chipset.

[mudrii]

I have ASUS A8N-SLI Premium same as your MB but not fun and SLI connector.
Just connect the hdd to nForce 4 SATA and boot from live CD and you will see sda drive recognize.
Do not use nForce4 LAN with LiveCD it has some problems just connect to MARVELL PCI Gbit LAN controller LAN cabel or modem etc.
Check if all modules are loaded with lsmod.
If your hardware is not recognize use

[auspsx68]

Thanks for your reply, however I am not really after a software raid I was going more along the line of a hardware raid utilising the bios raid function. At the moment I can achieve this in Fedora 3 x86_64 and the SLI 3114 controller but I am having loads of trouble with the SELinux profile and being able to config apache. Fedora allows me to run the 2 x SATA drives in a hardware raid config and only seees them as one drive, I am hoping to achieve this in gentoo. Any help would be much appreciated.

[mudrii]

It is not hardware RAID is soft RAID nForce4 is SOFT RAID, SIL is SOFT RAID this drv that you install is a soft part of the RAID.
If you wona true RAID go to adaptek SCSI or even SATA Arca PC-x RAID 6.
You can use dmraid utill if you wish but I am not shure if you can faind on Gentoo LiveCD 64 and is not other Live CD for 64 bit with dmraid as i know.
_________________
www.gentoo.ro

[auspsx68]

Thanks for the info I understand what you are saying about software raid seems a bit disappointing if the board raid is not a true raid but only soft raid (False Advertising) just could have got a cheaper board and raided of the normal bus if all I was going to end up with was soft raid. Anyway back to the install following your instructions do I still need to compile the Nvidia drivers into the kernel or do I load them as a module? Also when configuring the SATA drives should I configure them as a raid set or just leave them a individual drives? Is is possible to use lilo instead of grub? Or should I just use grub as you indicated. Thanks for all your help

[mudrii]

[auspsx68]

Thanks mate here is my total install sequence can you have a look and let me know it it will work. I will also need to compile the raid drivers into the kernel raid 0 and 1.


# modeprobe sata_nv
# modeprobe forcedeth
# modeprobe skge

# ifconfig eth0 ${IP_ADDR} broadcast ${BROADCAST} netmask ${NETMASK} up
# route add default gw ${GATEWAY}

# nano -w /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver ${NAMESERVER1}
nameserver ${NAMESERVER2}

# fdisk /dev/sda
sda1 200M /Boot ext2 fd
sda2 1024M swap 82
sda3 Remaining / ext3 fd

# fdisk /dev/sdb
sdb1 200M /Boot ext2 fd
sdb2 1024M swap 82
sdb3 Remaining / ext3 fd

# nano -w /etc/raidtab

# /boot (RAID 1)
raiddev /dev/md0
raid-level 1
nr-raid-disks 2
chunk-size 64
persistent-superblock 1
device /dev/sda1
raid-disk 0
device /dev/sdb1
raid-disk 1

# / (RAID 0)
raiddev /dev/md1
raid-level 0
nr-raid-disks 2
chunk-size 64
persistent-superblock 1
device /dev/sda3
raid-disk 0
device /dev/sdb3
raid-disk 1

# modprobe md && cd /dev ; MAKEDEV md
# mkraid --really-force /dev/md0 && mkraid --really-force /dev/md1
# mkswap /dev/sda2 && mkswap /dev/sdb2 && swapon /dev/sda2 && swapon /dev/sdb2
# cat /proc/mdstat
# mke2fs /dev/md0 && mke2fs -j /dev/md1
# mount -t ext3 /dev/md1 /mnt/gentoo && mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot && mount -t ext2 /dev/md0 /mnt/gentoo/boot && mount
# cd /mnt/gentoo
# tar -xvjpf /mnt/cdrom/stages/stage3-<subarch>-2005.1.tar.bz2
# tar -xvjf /mnt/cdrom/snapshots/portage-<date>.tar.bz2 -C /mnt/gentoo/usr
# mkdir /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles
# cp /mnt/cdrom/distfiles/* /mnt/gentoo/usr/portage/distfiles/

# nano -w /mnt/gentoo/etc/make.conf

##this is my flags and if you do not know what are you doing put standard handbook cflags -O2 -pipe for CFLAGS
USE="amd64 multilib nptl nptlonly"
CFLAGS="-march=k8 -O3 -pipe -funroll-all-loops -fpeel-loops -ftracer -ffast-math -msse3 -fforce-addr"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS} -fvisibility-inlines-hidden"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--sort-common"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=/usr/local/portage
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/GENTOO http://gentoo.gg3.net/ ftp://gg3.net/pub/linux/gentoo/"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"

# mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
# cp -L /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/gentoo/etc/resolv.conf
# cp -L /etc/raidtab /mnt/gentoo/etc/raidtab

# chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
# env-update
# source /etc/profile

# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT /etc/localtime
# emerge gentoo-sources
# cd /usr/src/linux
# make menuconfig

Processor type and features --->
Processor family (AMD-Opteron/Athlon64) --->
(*) AMD-Opteron/Athlon64
( ) Intel EM64T
( ) Generic-x86-64"

File systems --->
Pseudo Filesystems --->
<*> /proc file system support
< > /dev file system support (OBSOLETE)
<*> Virtual memory file system support (former shm fs)

(Select one or more of the following options as needed by your system)
< > Reiserfs support
<*> Ext3 journalling file system support
< > JFS filesystem support
<*> Second extended fs support
< > XFS filesystem support

Processor type and features --->
[ ] Symmetric multi-processing support

Device Drivers --->
SCSI device support --->
<*> SCSI device support
<*> SCSI disk support
<*> SCSI generic support
Device Drivers --->
SCSI device support --->
SCSI low-level drivers --->
[*] Serial ATA (SATA) support
< > ServerWorks Frodo / Apple K2 SATA support (EXPERIMENTAL)
< > Intel PIIX/ICH SATA support
<*> NVIDIA SATA support
< > Promise SATA TX2/TX4 support
< > Promise SATA SX4 support
< > Silicon Image SATA support
< > SiS 964/180 SATA support
< > VIA SATA support
< > VITESSE VSC-7174 SATA support


# make && make modules_install
# cp arch/x86_64/boot/bzImage /boot/kernel-2.6.12-gentoo-r6
# cp .config /boot/config-2.6.12-gentoo-r6

# nano -w /etc/fstab

/dev/md0 /boot ext2 noauto,noatime 1 2
/dev/md1 / ext3 noatime 0 1
/dev/sda2 none swap sw,pri=1 0 0
/dev/sdb2 none swap sw,pri=1 0 0
/dev/cdroms/cdrom0 /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,users 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs nodev,nosuid,noexec 0 0

# nano -w /etc/conf.d/hostname
# nano -w /etc/conf.d/domainname
# nano -w /etc/conf.d/domainname
# rc-update add domainname default

# nano -w /etc/conf.d/net
config_eth0=( "192.168.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0" )
routes_eth0=( "default gw 192.168.0.1" )

# rc-update add net.eth0 default
# passwd

# emerge syslog-ng
# rc-update add syslog-ng default
# emerge vixie-cron
# rc-update add vixie-cron default

# emerge grub
grub>> find /boot/grub/stage1
grub>> root (hd0,0)
grub>> setup (hd0)
grub>> root (hd1,0)
grub>> setup (hd1)
grub>> quit

# nano -w /boot/grub/grub.conf

default 0
timeout 21
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title=Gentoo 2.6.14 fb notsc
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/gentoo-sources-2.6.14 root=/dev/md1 video=vesafb:ywrap,mtrr,1280x1024-24@75 notsc clock=pmtmr

# cp /proc/mounts /etc/mtab
# grub-install /dev/sda
# grub-install /dev/sdb

# exit
# cd
# umount /mnt/gentoo/boot /mnt/gentoo/proc /mnt/gentoo
# reboot

[mudrii]

Boot from 64 bit Gentoo 2005.1 LiveCD
Boot options