ICH10R RAID support in Ubuntu

[davidp]

I was wondering if anyone has had any success with setting up RAID in Ubuntu 10.04. 0

I have a GA-EP45-UD3R mb with the ICH10R chipset for RAID. My system is dual-booted Win7 & Ubuntu 10.04.  The OSes are on a SSD separate from the RAID.  The RAID will be used for storing data (documents, photos, video, music, email, etc.), some of which I'd like to access from both OSes (but that's a separate concern ATM).

I created the RAID (RAID5) in the BIOS.  In windows I can access and partition the RAID volume with no problems.  However, when I boot into Ubuntu, the disk manager recognizes that the controller is SATA RAID, but doesn't see the disks under it as being part of a RAID volume -- just as distinct unrelated disks.   dmraid does not see the RAID volume either.

I've googled around for guidance but haven't seen anything helpful.  In fact, some people have hinted that the ICH10R may not be supported.

So, hopefully someone in this community can point me in the right direction -- either how to do it, or that it's just not possible.

Thanks!

David

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

I am surprised that nobody has jumped in here to help you yet as we do have some Linux experts on the forum. I am afraid that I am not one of them so can't really offer much advice in that quarter.

[jolphil]

Hi davidp,
Dark Mantis thought I might be able to help..I must confess that while I do use several flavors of Linux including 10.10, I have never used Raid on either Windows or Linux..
I did some goggling and  saw some instructions FWIW ..
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto
Ubuntu has a very  good support structure and can usually find someone else with the same question..
I hope it helps..
jolphil

[davidp]

Thanks for the response.  I'd already been through https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto before posting here.  While somewhat helpful, it's geared toward setting up to boot off the RAID, which is not my goal.  That said, I gleaned what I could, but was was stopped cold at the get-go:

"Run the partitioner program gparted (System->Administration->GParted)
9.10 loads dmraid automatically so you should see for a disk device
/dev/mapper/pdc_feddabdf or some suchlike
if dmraid detected and can use a fakeraid partition"

There is no /dev/mapper/ device.  The devices comprising the RAID show up as discrete, independent disks.
I've updated to the latest dmraid just in case that was an issue, but still no joy ... 

If it's just not possible I'd like to know so that I don't sink more time into a lost cause.  It's a bit hard to accept that functionality that worked with previous incarnations of the chipset would be unsupported for the latest chipset, which has been on the market and in wide use for 2.5 years.

If anyone has anything to add, I'm all ears.

Thanks!

David

[davidp]

After banging my head against this a while longer, I thought I'd change tack and see where it led.

In BIOS I deleted my RAID5 volume and created a RAID1 volume with 2 of the 3 disks. After booting into Win7 I created a NTFS partition on the RAID1 volume. During reboot, for some reason BIOS thought that the new volume was RAID5 with a dead disk. So I recreated the RAID1 volume and the NTFS partition, but this time unchecked the "quick format" option. Reboots henceforth saw the RAID1 volume.

Now when I booted ubuntu, the raid volume showed up in /dev/mapper without me having to do anything. Disk Utility showed the devices as "RAID Component". This is progress.

Disk Utility also showed the component devices under"Peripheral Devices". In addition, they showed up individually under "Places" in the menu bar. Not good.

Mounting the raid volume resolved that. First, I determined the UUID of the volume by running blkid and looking for the /dev/mapper entry. In /etc/fstab I added:
# RAID 1 volume
UUID=16D4FA0ED4F9F03B /shared ntfs auto,rw,noexec,dev,suid,posix=1 0 3

Ran:
sudo mount -a

It barked:
fuse: failed to access mountpoint /shared: No such file or directory

Solved this by:
sudo mkdir /shared

Then the mount finished without error.

Now Disk Utility shows just the raid volume under "Peripheral Devices".   

Given the number of postings about troubles with RAID0, coupled with my own experience with RAID5, I'm thinking that striping is at the root of the problems.  RAID1 is mirroring and no striping, and it works fine with no extra effort.  Striping crosses devices, and I suspect that there is a compatibility problem between how BIOS/Intel Matrix Manager layout the devices and what dmraid expects.

While not what I had wanted originally, I'll live with the RAID1 instead of RAID5. 

I've also posted on the Ubuntu forums.  Hopefully the ICH10R RAID issues will get addressed in due time.

David

[davidp]

"Currently Linux is not supported in Rapid Storage Technology (RST) RAID. Plans are to provide Linux support in a future release of RST."

from http://www.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/cs-032032.htm
Date Created: 17-Nov-2010
Last Modified: 18-Feb-2011

Rapid Storage Technology is the new name for Matrix RAID.

So it would appear that any attempts to get it working were doomed from the start.  I think my RAID1 volume works only because mirroring is relatively simple and the disks comprising the volume are treated as just regular disks.

It remains to be seen when this "future release of RST" materializes with Linux support.

[drclong]

I was wondering if anyone has had any success with setting up RAID in Ubuntu 10.04. 0

I have a GA-EP45-UD3R mb with the ICH10R chipset for RAID. My system is dual-booted Win7 & Ubuntu 10.04.  The OSes are on a SSD separate from the RAID.  The RAID will be used for storing data (documents, photos, video, music, email, etc.), some of which I'd like to access from both OSes (but that's a separate concern ATM).

I created the RAID (RAID5) in the BIOS.  In windows I can access and partition the RAID volume with no problems.  However, when I boot into Ubuntu, the disk manager recognizes that the controller is SATA RAID, but doesn't see the disks under it as being part of a RAID volume -- just as distinct unrelated disks.   dmraid does not see the RAID volume either.

I've googled around for guidance but haven't seen anything helpful.  In fact, some people have hinted that the ICH10R may not be supported.

So, hopefully someone in this community can point me in the right direction -- either how to do it, or that it's just not possible.

Thanks!

David

Hi Guys,
I have a very similar setup but with an independent drive for the dual boot W7 and Ubuntu 11. I am trying to set up 2 other drives in RAID 1 config but cant for the life of me get W7 to boot. It stops when the 4 coloured dots are about to do their thing. Any hints for this one as it is getting very frustrating. I want to be able to access the RAID drive from both OS's
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Chris.

[drclong]

Got it sorted when I stumbled onto this guide.

http://www.overclock.net/intel-motherboards/518665-guide-enable-intel-ich-raid-after.html

Worked like a charm!