Intel ICH9R "fake" RAID and Kubuntu (yet again)

[Objekt]

If your motherboard features this firmware (aka "fake") RAID controller and you think you want to dual-boot Windows, my advice is this: Don't bother. It's not worth the hassle.

I bought an extra, same-model and capacity HDD so I could run a RAID-1 configuration. I had a HDD die last fall, so I decided a RAID would be a good way to protect against further HDD failures.

The problem is, the ICH9R is simply NOT Linux-friendly. It may also be that Kubuntu's support for running on a firmware RAID is not as robust as needed, but the ICH9R seems very much designed with Windows, and only Windows, in mind.

If you try to install Kubuntu in a non-RAID fashion, e.g. with the filesystem on free space of one member of the RAID only, it won't work. The ICH9R firmware and/or Intel Matrix software that runs in Windows will see this as a "defect" in the RAID and will wipe out your Kubuntu install the next time you run Windows.

If you install Kubuntu on to the RAID, it may work for a while. In my case, I was able to dual-boot for about a week. Then, mysteriously, Kubuntu would no longer boot. I got as far as determining that the RAID's UUID had somehow changed (usually it's something like "isw_string_of_letters_number"), but could never get Kubuntu to boot after that. I'm going to be reinstalling Kubuntu as soon as I get done here.

From this point forward, I believe I will just use rsync as a simple means of backup. I have two same-type and capacity HDD's, so it should be easy enough to just store a disk image once a week or something like that. I could even automate it if I wanted to get fancy.

[lmilano]

Re: Intel ICH9R "fake" RAID and Kubuntu (yet again)

Thanks for the heads up. I do exactly that. I run rsync at night, automatically, and I do, not a disk image copy, but an incremental backup of /home.

With / I do something different. I do a recursive copy (offline, from a live cd) preserving all attributes (-a option), just a few times a year, to another partition, just in case. When I really get disciplined, I do it right before upgrading to the next release, in case something goes wrong in the upgrade.

I can post my script tonight if you think it could be useful ...

[dibl]

Re: Intel ICH9R "fake" RAID and Kubuntu (yet again)

Thanks for posting this, Objekt! I think too often failed experiments don't see the light of day -- you can save a lot of people a lot of time by simply reporting what has been tried and won't work.

FYI, for anyone seriously in need of RAID (I don't see the point on a desktop, but servers of course are a different story) I'm told by someone whose opinion I trust that the 3ware SATA controllers are very Linux-friendly -- some of their engineers are even Linux kernel developers. So, there's a tip.

[Objekt]

Re: Intel ICH9R "fake" RAID and Kubuntu (yet again)

Yup, 3ware came up when I was looking for true, entirely hardware-based RAID controllers. I quickly learned that the good ones aren't cheap, and the cheap ones aren't so good. I just as quickly decided it was not worth another $200-$300 to run a true hardware RAID-1 config, when I could use a second HDD + rsync to do just about the same thing.

I could see doing it on a server, of course. But that's a whole other game.

I haven't delved into the exact reasons that the ICHR9R cannot be properly dealt with under Linux. I'd guess it's as simple as Intel not allowing anyone to know the real specs to make drivers for their chipset.

[dibl]

Re: Intel ICH9R "fake" RAID and Kubuntu (yet again)

I just as quickly decided it was not worth another $200-$300 to run a true hardware RAID-1 config, when I could use a second HDD + rsync to do just about the same thing.

There you go. Or for lazier folks, "second hdd plus the "cp" command once in awhile".

Get this -- the computer that my wife uses today is one I built in spring of 2004, also on an Intel D975XBX motherboard. Out of anxiety for data safety (this was before I started using Linux) I bought a pair of WD740 Raptor drives, and used the onboard Silicon Image RAID chip, with Windows drivers, to set them up as a mirrored set under Windows XP. Here was are, 5+ years later, and there they sit, spinning away at 10.000 RPM, never lost a byte of data and never broke. Huh, I guess I could have had 140GB of storage just as well!