Dual boot RAID snafu - help?

Ok in my annual fight with linux I attemepted to install RH8.0 on my main rig. I normally run Win2k from 2 40 gig hard drives set up as RAID 0 on a Promise Fasttrak card, formatted as NTFS. To install RH8, I just popped a 3 gig drive onto the Promise card and went through the standard install process. RH saw the 3 gig drive, but did not see the 80 gig RAID. I installed onto the 3 gig pretty much accepting the default settings. Everything seemed to go fine.

When I boot up, GRUB appears but only has the option of running Linux. If I take the 3 gig drive out, the machine will no longer boot; it hangs on a GRUB error. I'd like to be able to boot into Win2k somehow. I'd like to be able to get the data off the drive rather than just reformatting and reinstalling. None of the data is irreplaceable, but it would take a long time to put back together.

suggestions?

nihili

Boot into Linux, and add this to your /boot/grub/menu.lst:

title=Winxp
root(hd0,2)
chainloader +1


Note: In the second line with root, hd0 is the hard drive in your system, with counting starting at zero. Not sure what you'd want to put for your raid array though, probably need to mix experimentation and common sense. The 2 is the partition on the drive, starting at zero. Its probably zero on your raid array.

You won't be able to see the raid array from Linux until you recompile your kernel with a driver for it, or maybe Redhat has already compiled the driver for it and you just need to load the module.

ok, couple questions then

RH Hardware Browser lists the drives that are in RAID as hde and hdf. Any educated guesses about how to list them in GRUB?

Also, how do I recompile the kernel with a driver for the Promise card? It's a Fasttrak 100 Tx2.

nihili

Also, how do I recompile the kernel with a driver for the Promise card? It's a Fasttrak 100 Tx2.

Click to expand...

Go to the kernel source directory, it's usually at '/usr/src/linux-2.4.**'

Then type:
make menuconfig (that will give you a list of kernel options, you then just go thru the menu adding stuff that you want to either build into the kernel, or as modules. And if you have any questions about what to add just select the help for a neat little descritption)

after you make all of the changes then type

make dep
make modules
make modules_install

you can either do each command one at a time or all at once, ie. make dep; make modules; etc...

well the closest thing I could find to that was in lib/modules/2.4.18-14

When I type make menuconfig, it says
make: *** No rule to make target `menuconfig'. Stop.

Ideas?

That's probably because the kernel source code wasn't install on your system. Go to www.kernel.org and get the latest kernel, or just install it from the Red Hat 8.0 CD

Just a little tip (everything else seems fine, although I am not sure about grub's capabilities for booting off of raids), you can do make dep modules modules_install in a single line, saves me a lot of time when I have to recompile 20 times in an hour trying to get this tweak or other working

well, i had bad time using raid as dual boot!! it probably you didn't install the driver for it!! like my highpoint 370 raid, i need to install the driver so the RH7.3 can see 2 drive as raid...or else...will be like your case...hda...hdb. try search promise site for more detail on installing driver.......i think recompile the kernel is a must......

well i got the windows stuff back by using fdisk /mbr Of coursenow i don't have dual boot, but at least i didn't lose anything. Now I just have to track down how to deal with the RAID stuff and learn how to recompile the kernel. I'm trying to do it on another machine, but not having a lot of luck yet. I recompiled it with NTFS, but when I try to mount an NTFS partition it says NTFS isn't supported. Hmmmm.

nihili

If you're up for reading here are some HOWTOs explaining kernel building, modules, and RAID.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Module-HOWTO

And if you need more go to the Linux Documentation Progect page.
www.tldp.org

I get a ton of errors when I compile the kernel. Here's an example fromthe end of make modules_install.

make -C cipe modules_install
make[3]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14/drivers/addon/cipe'
mkdir -p /lib/modules/2.4.18-14custom/kernel/drivers/addon/cipe/
cp cipcb.o /lib/modules/2.4.18-14custom/kernel/drivers/addon/cipe/
cp: cannot stat `cipcb.o': No such file or directory
make[3]: *** [_modinst__] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14/drivers/addon/cipe'
make[2]: *** [_modinst_cipe] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14/drivers/addon'
make[1]: *** [_modinst_addon] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.4.18-14/drivers'
make: *** [_modinst_drivers] Error 2


ideas?

nihili

ummm... maybe just try:
'make modules_install'
That has always worked for me.

And I'm not sure, but I was reading somewhere about the new 2.4.19 kernel, and how you needed newer glibc libraries, or a newer gcc in order to compile, so maybe the same thing is true with the 2.4.18 kernel.

Also the readme in the /usr/src/linux-2.4.18 dir is very helpful on compiling a kernel.

I'll have a look at the readme. I did use just that 'make modules_install' command, what you see is just cut and pasted from the the end of what echoed to screen.

I'm using the kernel and libraries that came with redhat8.0, I would assume they would be compatible?

nihili

Hmm, are you positive you did make dep first? Also, make sure all the wirte permissions are right.

just noticed the difference between the kernel names, just 2.4.18 vs 2.4.18 custom, that could be a problem. Not sure how it is suppsoed to work, it's not like I read my compilation logs