Centos 4.1 (x86_64) On Precision 670

Question

I have been trying to get Centos 4.1 x86_64 (RHEL4 clone w/o RH branding) installed on my 670 but am having problems with GRUB or maybe the scsi controller I am not totally sure at this point. Basically, the installation goes perfectly no errors, but upon rebooting I receive the word GRUB at the prompt and nothing more. I brought up the distro in rescue mode and performed a manual GRUB install. After doing that I now get past stage 1.5 on boot but then the boot process stops with the following message: Grub loading, please wait... Error 2 Pertinent System configuration is as follows: 2 146GB 15K SCSI drives configured for raid0 via adaptec u320 (aic-7901A) HostRaid Note: The linux installer does not see the Raid0 configuration because it shows 2 146GB scsi drives. However, it does recognize and load the AIC-79XX driver. At this point I have tried many types of installs and am just trying to get it to boot before trying to get a Raid configuration working under linux (whether it be Linux software raid or the built in raid). Currently I am only using the first scsi disk and have just a single bootable root partition. My grub.conf looks as follows: # grub.conf generated by anaconda # # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file # NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg. # root (hd0,0) # kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda1 # initrd /boot/initrd-version.img #boot=/dev/sda default=0 timeout=5 splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title CentOS-4 x86_64 (2.6.9-11.ELsmp) root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-11.ELsmp ro root=/dev/sda1 initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-11.ELsmp.img title CentOS-4 x86_64-up (2.6.9-11.EL) root (hd0,0) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-11.EL ro root=/dev/sda1 initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-11.EL.img *Any* help on this is greatly appreciated as I am totally frustrated at this point and have no clue how to get this working. I am also willing to try other (free) x86_64 distros if someone has one working on a like configured 670. Thanks, Keith

dsbInspiron · Answer

Hey,

I did some research (I know very little about this), and noticed some issues with Linux and RAID (people were getting the error message you got. As you know linux is more hardware oriented and RAID isn't exactly that. Try this link out:

http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/linux-adv/raid.htm

Outside of that, I wouldn't know, may want to try some Linux sites. Good Luck.

Message Edited by dsbInspiron on 06-24-2005 02:03 PM

ksamitre · Answer

Thanks for the reply! I got it working with Software raid. The key to getting it installed with the U320 AIC-7901 is to not setup the raid via the bios tools but instead use the linux tools. I had to go into the Raid configuration (CTRL-A) during boot process and undo the raid configuration. Then I could install CentOS successfully with software raid. Apparently the AIC-7901 is software raid anyway so there really should be no real performance impact for me doing software raid in linux vs. software raid via the aic-7901...

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