Installing Kubuntu on a RAID0 setup?

[Swooper]

Hello.
I've been meaning to dual-boot my new (3 months old) desktop PC, currently running Vista Home Premium 32bit, with Kubuntu for a while now. A friend of mine gave me a 8.04 LiveCD earlier this autumn, and tonight I finally took the time and effort to try to install it. I followed these instructions, knowing Ubuntu and Kubuntu are similar enough that it should work. I hit a brick wall when I got to stage 4 of 7 on the third page of that guide - choosing a partition to install Kubuntu to. Firstly, it didn't give me the option to 'use the largest continuous free space', so I tried manual. The screen I got then didn't seem very understandable, other than that I seemed to be able to choose one out of my two 500GB Samsung Spinpoint hard drives. I did not like those options, because these hard drives are currently RAID0'ed together. Choosing either one would surely collapse the fragile structure that RAID0 is and destroy my Windows partition, complete with all data (although I regularly backup my files to a removable HD, it'd still hurt). After a failed attempt at googling for information, I found no quick (or understandable) solution and was forced to give up for now.

So I turn to you. I'm sure someone out there has a solution for this problem. Right?

[Swooper]

Re: Installing Kubuntu on a RAID0 setup?

OK, so no replies here yet. I did however get some feedback over here.

According to this, the 8.10 version is supposed to have improved RAID support, but only on the Alternate Install cd. So I downloaded and burned it to a cd. But it didn't work. Installation failed when it got to the 'Detect disks' part of the install procedure. These are the messages I got:

One or more drives containing Serial ATA RAID configurations have been found. Do you wish to activate these RAID devices?

Activate Serial ATA RAID devices?

<Go Back> <Yes> <No>

And the next step, after selecting <Yes>:

An installation step failed. You can try to run the failing item again from the menu, or skip it and choose something else. The failing step is: Detect disks.

<Continue>

Any ideas? Or am I just screwed until 9.04 comes out?

[dibl]

Re: Installing Kubuntu on a RAID0 setup?

I think you need to research "hardware RAID" and "software RAID".

Hardware RAID, such as that commonly provided on the motherboard SATA chipset, is not supported by Linux, because the chip makers don't provide a Linux driver.

Linux supports software RAID, aka "fake raid". Most experts say it's not very effective or efficient. Google "mdadmin" and "fake raid" to learn all about it.

I'm told (and can't prove) that the third party 3ware PCI RAID adapters, which come with Linux drivers, provide an awesome RAID capability, if that's what you have your heart set on.

http://sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-...ight-RAID.html

[PerfectApproach]

Re: Installing Kubuntu on a RAID0 setup?

I think I smell what you're steppin' in.

Problem: You wanna install Kubu on a PC that already has a RAID0 Windows setup. Since the RAID "hardware" needs a driver to operate and the Windows installation spans the entire array, there's no space to fit Kubu on either disk and there is no way to resize it without losing the Windows setup.

The short answer is simply that it is REALLY hard. It's even harder if you want to use the OEM Windows setup.

If you're truly adamant about it, here's the best way to go about this.
1) You can't clone the partition. A true Hardware raid setup would allow this, but you probably don't have that. You can pull of the partition (and maybe even resize it afterwards), but you'll never be able to get it back on.
2) Backup your data.
3) Blow off your Vista partition.
4) Reinstall Vista, using less space. The Vista installation should prompt for additional drivers at some point, and you'll need to slip the SATA/RAID drivers in. Remember, leave some unused space.
5) Install Kubu in the unused space.

I glossed over a whole lot of details, but don't let them get you down. Be prepared for a few fdisk/format/reinstalls before getting it right. I'm sure it's possible...but really hard.

OH YEAH!! I forgot to mention.... You can use either the Desktop CD or the Alternate CD. If you use the Desktop CD, you can just use Aptitude/Synaptic to get the MD tools you need, and manually configure the partitions/RAID arrays. If you use the Alternate CD, the MD tools are built-in, but you're working without the nice GUI.

[Swooper]

Re: Installing Kubuntu on a RAID0 setup?

Hmm, actually I could resize the NTFS partition on the raid without problems. There's now a 142.5GB unassigned space on it. The problem is that the dmraid raid-driver won't recognize the raid array as such (and therefore recognizes neither the NTFS partition nor the free space) - the kubuntu livecd installer sees two seperate HDs and the alternate cd sees the raid but gives an error message and is unable to proceed past a certain space.

Right now, I'm trying to find out whether the problem lies with the fact that dmraid only supports certain RAID formats. I still have no idea what format I'm using, googling has been unsuccessful. This is my motherboard, I'm using an onboard feature for the RAID.

The information about dmraid in the Adept Manager says:

The following formats are supported: Highpoint HPT37X/HPT45X Intel Software RAID LSI Logic MegaRAID Nvidia Nforce RAID (nvraid) Promise FastTrack Silicon Image(tm) Medley(tm) VIA Software RAID