CentOS - Feb 2006 - Problems with IDE RAID on specific motherboard

About 9 months ago, I made a policy decision to adopt RAID 1 on all systems I 
admin. (about 20 systems, all told) It's been a long, slow process. 

One of the systems is being upgraded from CentOS3 to CentOS4. It's been 
rock-solid stable for over a year. It's a "frankenserver" with
parts from all
over the place, maintained over years of active service. 

Currently, it's got an ASRock "M810LMR" motherboard in it. 
http://www.ciao.co.uk/ASRock_M810LMR__5410842

When I install the O/S (I've tried CentOS 4.0 and 4.2) with IDE RAID, it 
bombs, takes hours just to format the drives, and won't reboot, getting
stuck
at "GRUB". But, when I install the SAME TWO DRIVES without RAID, (eg:
some
partitions on one drive, some on the other) it works perfectly. 

I've tried putting both drives on separate IDE cablels, using completely 
different drives, and trying CentOS 4.0 and 4.2. 

When I try to set up IDE raid while it's taking a very long time to format
the
drives, I see lots of errors about DMA on the alternate consoles, and there 
being only one drive (unable to start RAID array, only 1 drive found) even 
though the installer and disk druid have no problem reporting both drives. It 
comes down to something like "/dev/mdN delayed until /dev/mdX is
synchronized
because they share physical resources"... 

I'm stumped, and falling back to non-RAID because this system is needed in 
production. And, I'm not new to using software RAID, I've been using it
for
years without issue. 

Any idea what's going on? 
-- 
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
- XEROX PARC slogan, circa 1978

Check, IDS cables, jumpers, BIOS settings.

Also, download the .iso support CD from the manufacturer (western 
digital, seagte, etc)
and boot with that CD, check SMART and hardware and re certificate your 
discs
to be fault free.

Then, try it again. I thinks its a hardware issue

HTH
Oliver

Benjamin Smith wrote:
> About 9 months ago, I made a policy decision to adopt RAID 1 on all systems
I
> admin. (about 20 systems, all told) It's been a long, slow process. 
>
> One of the systems is being upgraded from CentOS3 to CentOS4. It's been
> rock-solid stable for over a year. It's a "frankenserver"
with parts from all
> over the place, maintained over years of active service. 
>
> Currently, it's got an ASRock "M810LMR" motherboard in it. 
> http://www.ciao.co.uk/ASRock_M810LMR__5410842
>
> When I install the O/S (I've tried CentOS 4.0 and 4.2) with IDE RAID,
it
> bombs, takes hours just to format the drives, and won't reboot, getting
stuck
> at "GRUB". But, when I install the SAME TWO DRIVES without RAID,
(eg: some
> partitions on one drive, some on the other) it works perfectly. 
>
> I've tried putting both drives on separate IDE cablels, using
completely
> different drives, and trying CentOS 4.0 and 4.2. 
>
> When I try to set up IDE raid while it's taking a very long time to
format the
> drives, I see lots of errors about DMA on the alternate consoles, and there
> being only one drive (unable to start RAID array, only 1 drive found) even 
> though the installer and disk druid have no problem reporting both drives.
It
> comes down to something like "/dev/mdN delayed until /dev/mdX is
synchronized
> because they share physical resources"... 
>
> I'm stumped, and falling back to non-RAID because this system is needed
in
> production. And, I'm not new to using software RAID, I've been
using it for
> years without issue. 
>
> Any idea what's going on? 
>   
-- 
Oliver Schulze L.
<oliver at samera.com.py>

On Wed, 2006-02-15 at 20:32 -0800, Benjamin Smith wrote:
> About 9 months ago, I made a policy decision to adopt RAID 1 on all systems
I
> admin. (about 20 systems, all told) It's been a long, slow process. 
> 
> One of the systems is being upgraded from CentOS3 to CentOS4. It's been
> rock-solid stable for over a year. It's a "frankenserver"
with parts from all
> over the place, maintained over years of active service. 
> 
> Currently, it's got an ASRock "M810LMR" motherboard in it. 
> http://www.ciao.co.uk/ASRock_M810LMR__5410842
Looks like this board is based on a early socket A VIA chipset ...
generally I would avoid these.  My past experience with older VIA
chipsets has been less than good ... I've had issues with buggy IDE
implementations in KT266 & KT133A and having to run them in PIO mode
rather than DMA mode (SLOW).

I would use a cheap PCI IDE card and see what happens.

Regards,
Paul Berger