nvidia Raid issue related to 8756 build

[jfr2000]

I have been struggling with trying to install the 8756 drivers. I installed FC5
x86_64 on a SATA Raid 0 volume. It's an MSI K8N SLI series mobo with an Athlon 64 Dual-Core 4200 CPU and dual nvidia 7600 GT's in SLI configuration.

According to what I've read, you need to have the 2.6.16_2080_FC5 kernel and related kernel-dev package to build the drivers. I installed both, but found that I cannot boot off the 2.6.16_2080 kernel from the nvidia raid controller. The system panics. The previous kernel boots off the raid array okay. I've found several other mentions of this on the net but no solution has been offered. Is anyone else aware of this issue and whether or not there's a fix? I suppose I could add another non-RAID disk and make it my system disk, but I really don't want to go that route. And besides, it works in the previous version.

Thanks for any suggestions.

-j

[Lithorus]

I fail to see what this has to do with Nvidia's display driver...

Are you saying that you installed the 2.6.16_2080_FC5 kernel and the controller won't get detected afterwards? Which kernel did you controller get detected with in the first place?

I don't think you need the 2080 kernel specifically, you just need the appropiate kernel headers for the kernel you are running.

[jfr2000]

Originally Posted by Lithorus

I fail to see what this has to do with Nvidia's display driver...

Are you saying that you installed the 2.6.16_2080_FC5 kernel and the controller won't get detected afterwards? Which kernel did you controller get detected with in the first place?

I don't think you need the 2080 kernel specifically, you just need the appropiate kernel headers for the kernel you are running.

Well, if this is off-topic, sorry, but I was just wondering if anyone else here has been able to resolve the RAID issue.

I was not able to install the drivers using the 2.6.15-1.2054 kernel and kernel-devel packages. An error is generated during the build process related to an unknown symbol. There was another post in this forum on the same issue, and someone from Nvidia said that the 2.6.16-1.2080 kernel was required to build the drivers. After updating to that kernel and kernel-dev package, the system can't boot from the Nvidia SATA raid. I have read numerous reports of this problem.

In any case, I did end up adding another non-RAID IDE disk and installed FC5 on that, then upgraded the kernel and kernel-dev packages to 2.6.16-1.2080 kernel, and was able to successfully build and install the Nvidia display drivers. I'm still seeing errors at boot up related to the disk mapper, so there are still issues with the Nvidia RAID, but since I don't need it at the
moment, I can live with it until this is fixed.

[kenyee]

AFAIK, the nVidia *graphics* drivers don't include the RAID component.

The Linux built-in "dmraid" driver is what understands how to read/write the nVidia RAID format; there is no hardware involved except for the BIOS that lets you boot off it so you can load the OS drivers for nVidia raid (real RAID doesn't need drivers). Look up "fakeraid" to see how much of an abomination this thing truly is. :-)

You're better off using Linux's mdraid software raid...

[jfr2000]

Originally Posted by kenyee

AFAIK, the nVidia *graphics* drivers don't include the RAID component.

The Linux built-in "dmraid" driver is what understands how to read/write the nVidia RAID format; there is no hardware involved except for the BIOS that lets you boot off it so you can load the OS drivers for nVidia raid (real RAID doesn't need drivers). Look up "fakeraid" to see how much of an abomination this thing truly is. :-)

You're better off using Linux's mdraid software raid...

I think there's some misunderstanding here. I know the Nvidia graphcis drivers don't contain the RAID support. What I was saying was that after updating the kernel to 2.6.16-1.2080 so that I could build the display drivers, the kernel update results in the system no longer being able to boot from the Nvidia RAID device. I was just trying to find out if anyone else ran into that problem and whether anyone had been able to resolve it.

As far as using mdraid, the system I have already has Windows XP installed on the RAID disk, so I am trying to avoid reconfiguring my disks. For now, I've gotten around the problem by adding a separate disk and installing Linux there, so it's all good for the moment.

-j

[kenyee]

ahhh...the subject of your original post implied it was a problem caused by the 8756 drivers :-)
You'll probably have more luck asking on a Fedora forum...

[SkipSailors]

I have this pattern! I have an ASUS A8N-VM CSM with nvRaid that worked in the 2054 build but cannot boot from the 2080 build. There probably is better help in a Fedora forum somewhere, but I thought you might like to know, you're not alone.