Cannot install linux (fedora) because it sees one RAID disc while there are 2 se

[pmoroz]

Cannot install linux (fedora) because it sees one RAID disc while there are 2 separate hard drives and the BIOS was set for AHCI.

 

[PreferLinux]

Have you set up RAID?

 

[bmouring]

Yeah, we need a bit more info to assist you here: is there a BIOS "fake raid" type setup that you're trying to use? I would heavily advise _against_ using those: they're just kinda slapped in there by mobo manufactures so they can list "RAID" under the features, yet you still need to install SW during the OS install (at least with Windows, Linux can usually handle it during install anyway since it has many, many drivers built into the install-media kernel) and that software ends up doing a lot of the heavy lifting anyway.

If you want reliability, I suggest setting up software RAID1/5/10/etc. under Linux (will take a bit of doing, but who knows, there are likely linux installation disks that will help you set that up automagically), if you want performance I heavily suggest getting a _real_ HW raid card (these are usually fairly expensive, if the card is less that $100 you can be pretty sure it's not really HW raid)

 

[pmoroz]

Thanks for a reply. But unfortunately it's not very relevant. My laptop came with RAID-0 installed. It has 2 SATA hard drives. But, I do not want any RAID, because I want to have 2 separate hard drives -- one for windows, and second -- for linux Fedora. So, I went to BIOS and changed SATA Operation to AHCI (other options are RAID and ATA). Then I reinstalled the windows on one of the hard drives. Then I installed Fedora 14 on the 2nd hard drive. It was not easy because initially installer did not recognize that there are two separate hard drives, but instead it believed that there is a single RAID disk. I have to use the options: nodmraid nomdraid. Then the installer recognized that there are 2 separate hard drives, and I was able to install linux on the 2nd drive. The problem however is that after linux installation I cannot see the windows files on ntfs partitions, while I am running linux. The error is "code21: ntfs-3g-mount: mount failed. Device or resource busy." I believe it is the same RAID problem. Does anyone know a solution? Thanks.

 

[bmouring]

Can you post the output of

fdisk -l

(you will need to run that as root)

Also, the "nodmraid" and related options really, really point to a BIOS fakeraid, are you sure there aren't additional settings in the BIOS to disable it? What about having certain SATA slots that are dedicated to this fake RAID (anything that's plugged into it is presented as such)

 

[pmoroz]

Below is the result of fdisk -l command. The disk /dev/sda is the linux disk while /dev/sdb is the windows disk. Still I am not able to access ntfs files on /dev/sdb. The error message is: "exit code 21: ntfs-3g-mount: mount failed: Device or resource busy." I do not see any additional settings in the BIOS that could still enforce RAID. Or maybe it's not a RAID problem? Any ideas on how to resolve this issue? Thanks.

Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000001

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 61442047 30720000 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 61442048 367618047 153088000 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 367618048 401410047 16896000 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4 401410048 1465147391 531868672 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 401412096 1465147391 531867648 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x968fe821

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 206848 760371199 380082176 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb3 760371200 1465143295 352386048 7 HPFS/NTFS

 

[pmoroz]

When I tried to use the Disk Utility to mount /dev/sdb, I could see that Linux believes that the connection to this hard drive is ATA. While it was set to AHCI in the BIOS. Maybe this is the problem? Can, in principle, linux work correctly with AHCI setting in the BIOS? But if I want to change BIOS to ATA, then I would probably need to reinstall Windows fresh, which I prefer not to do. Any advice? Thanks.

 

[bmouring]

Simply because there _is_ a second disk, Linux can see it (which is counter to what you'd said earlier: it can _see_ both sda and sdb), this is no longer a RAID issue.

What is the output from

df

to see if the windows drive is being mounted/used somewhere (since it's complaining about being busy)

As far as AHCI/RAID/Legacy mode, any reasonably recent Linux install will be able to handle any mode that the BIOS is configured to communicate with the device is, granted that the BIOS isn't broken for that mode. What about the access to the disk indicates that it's in ATA mode?

 

[pmoroz]

Here is the output of df. There is no /dev/sdb there.

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 30237648 5687640 23014008 20% /
tmpfs 8258756 260 8258496 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda5 523522024 320852 496607792 1% /home
/dev/sda2 150685932 192068 142839464 1% /usr/local

 

[bmouring]

Hmm, at this point there's a few things I'd try out just to see what's happening with the disk, things like looking at the output of

dmesg|grep sdb
//or, more likely, dmesg|less and using the built-in search to find references to sdb

or

lsof|grep -i sdb

to see if anyone is holding a file descriptor to the device

In order to get Linux to see /dev/sdb, did you have to do an installation using the "nodmraid" and "nomdraid"? If so, there may still very well be RAID metadata on the drives that's making the installer think that there's a RAID array setup, which is a separate issue (that requires either a gentle touch to fix without damaging your Windows install or, I would suggest just wiping both disks and starting fresh)

I guess ultimately, the question is "why do you want read/write access to your Windows drive?" If you don't need to get access to the Windows OS/program files themselves but would rather a conduit to share files/media, I would recommend looking at creating a FAT32 partition that's shared between the two OS's (keeping in mind that FAT32 does have a 4 GiB filesize limitation) since it's much, much better supported by both OSs (and you don't run the risk of damaging your Windows install from Linux

 

[pmoroz]

here is the output of dmesg|grep sdb:

[ 2.910351] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 1465149168 512-byte logical blocks: (750 GB/698 GiB)
[ 2.910354] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 4096-byte physical blocks
[ 2.910437] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 2.910440] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 2.910472] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 2.910688] sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3
[ 2.934683] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[ 11.112855] md: bind<sdb>

and the output of lsof|grep -i sdb does not have any info about /dev/sdb but instead it references 2 library files:
/usr/lib64/gio/modules/libgvfsdbus.so
/usr/lib64/libnssdbm3.so

 

[pmoroz]

Youngster,
You've mentioned that RAID problems might still be there : "that requires either a gentle touch to fix without damaging your Windows install". Could you please be more specific describing concrete steps to do? At the same time, you've mentioned before that because fdisk sees 2 drives then it is not RAID. Please advise. Thanks.

 

[PreferLinux]

What he means is that, while it is not set up as RAID (which means fdisk sees it as two separate disks), the drives still have data on them (in places like MBR, VBR, filesystem metadata) which says they are in RAID, meaning that other programs have problems. What command are you using to mount it?

 

[pmoroz]

The problem was resolved when I replaced Fedora 14 with Fedora 15. So, apparently it was a Fedora 14 bug which could not handle properly my new laptop. I did not change anything in BIOS, or in Windows setup, or anything else, just installed Fedora 15 instead of Fedora 14. Fedora 15 fixed this problem, but unfortunately there is another problem now -- some of USB ports are not working (while all work when I run Windows), I mean, USB ports on the right are working, but USB ports on the left side of the laptop are not working. Thanks for you willingness to help.

 

[PreferLinux]

It's good to hear it is working now.

Is there any difference in the USB ports? For example, is one side USB2 and the other USB3?

 

[bmouring]

Likewise, glad to hear it's working.

The kernel log message

[ 11.112855] md: bind<sdb>

indicates that there was still some RAID metadata on the disk that was erroneously being picked-up by the underlying SW RAID system (helpfully just called "md", you know, for "multiple devices", very clear nomenclature )

 

[pmoroz]

All USB ports are the same. It's a new laptop from Dell. And it's only a linux problem, as all USB ports work fine under windows OS.

 

[bmouring]

Hmm, perhaps posting the output of

lspci

and

lsusb

would at least be useful as a sanity check to make sure that the USB root hubs are seen/recognized

 

[pmoroz]

Here is the output of lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Sandy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sandy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point HECI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Cougar Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev b5)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b5)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev b5)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point LPC Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Cougar Point SMBus Controller (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 0dd1 (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation Device 0be9 (rev a1)
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Device 1083 (rev c0)
0d:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (rev 35)
13:00.0 Class ff00: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 5209 (rev 01)
13:00.1 SD Host controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 5209 (rev 01)
19:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 04)

And here is the output of lsusb:
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 413c:8187 Dell Computer Corp. DW375 Bluetooth Module
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 046d:c52b Logitech, Inc. Unifying Receiver
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 05ca:181a Ricoh Co., Ltd
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 187c:0520 Alienware Corporation
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 0955:7002 NVidia Corp.

Thanks for trying to help.

 

[bmouring]

Here is the output of lspci:
---SNIP---
19:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 04)

Are you sure that those ports on the non-working side aren't USB 3.0? (which was disabled in many recent distributions due to an issue with suspend/resume functionality and XHCI/USB 3.0)

Are you still working with Fedora 15?

 

[PreferLinux]

That is pretty much what I was about to ask!

 

[bmouring]

That is pretty much what I was about to ask!

Sorry to beat you to the punch, but you were certainly barking up the right tree to begin with

 

[PreferLinux]

That's OK!

 

[pmoroz]

Are you sure that those ports on the non-working side aren't USB 3.0? (which was disabled in many recent distributions due to an issue with suspend/resume functionality and XHCI/USB 3.0)

Are you still working with Fedora 15?

Yes, I'm using Fedora 15. It seems to be the latest available distribution of Fedora at present time. I have 2 USB ports on the left of the laptop which are not working for Linux (but they are working just fine for Windows). It's probably true that those ports are USB 3.0 . Is it possible to enable them? It's definitely a serious inconvenience when ports are not working.

 

[bmouring]

If it's a fresh install of 15, it should "just work TM".

Check to see if the module's loaded with

lsmod|grep -i xhci

If it was an upgrade from 14 where you had to dink around to get them to work (as noted here), you have to un-dink stuff (as noted here)

It might be helpful to see what modules are loaded, so if none of the above helps, post up the result of

lsmod