RAID and FC5 Installation Problems

[Nathan Grennan]

Hassan Dar wrote:
>
> Hi everyone.
>
> I’ve been having endless headaches with the FC5 installation. I’ve 
> managed to get most of them sorted but I’m now really stumped.
>
> Well I was having the common problem of the install hanging at the X 
> Server screen with a black background and ‘X’ Cursor. I used the 
> ‘linux nodmraid’ at the boot prompt and it successfully got me to the 
> GUI. However, I am trying to install on a RAID 0 partition and as you 
> can see, if I use ‘nodmraid’ I can’t activate my RAID partition for 
> the installer to see. I’m at a loss for what to do I can’t see any 
> other option as dmraid would be needed to actually show RAID files but 
> at the same time I need to get to the GUI Installer!
>
> Here are a few things to note:
>
> Text install DOES NOT WORK It has the same problem as the GUI install, 
> it works only if I use ‘nodmraid’.
>
> I have tried the ‘linux vesa’ command which is a common fix to the 
> black screen and x cursor problem. However, If I boot with this 
> command, when X server starts up my monitor gives a ‘No Signal’ message.
>
> I am installing the x86_64 release of FC5 and I DO have a 64-bit 
> processor.
>
> All 6 discs of my installation media have been SHA1SUM verified and 
> are all complete.
>
> I burned the media first as a simulation at the slowest speed possible 
> on my drive (8x 1,200kb/s) and then I used nero to verify the data. 
> Passes all tests.
>
> With DMA turned off (with the ide=nodma command) the CD media all pass 
> the mediacheck test.
>
> I have been trying to do a Hard Drive install but can burn the discs 
> if this will cause complications.
>
> I have tried running the dmraid –v –ay command as soon as the GUI 
> appears, but this does not do anything.
>
> I have two RAID 0 Arrays, Array 1 is comprised of two identical 160GB 
> Seagate SATA drives, Array 2 is comprised of three identical 40GB 
> Seagate IDE/ATA Drives. I do not wish to install anything on the SATA 
> RAID array as it is for storage only, I wish to install fedora core on 
> the IDE/ATA Array. Both of these Arrays work fine under Windows XP 
> Professional so I know my Arrays are fine.
>
> My RAID is configured by the onboard nForce 4 RAID controller also 
> known as software or fake RAID.
>
> I have used the ‘dmraid –v –ay’ command and then used ‘ls 
> /dev/mapper/’ to verify my drives were all there, linux correctly 
> indentifies them with this command.
>
> I would be very grateful to anyone who could help me, I’ve posted on 
> fedora forums but no one was able to help me sort it out. I have also 
> tried the fedora IRC community who also could not help me. Thank you 
> for your time.
>
You seem to be experiencing the issue reported in the bug report below. 
There seems to be a fix in the comments.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=186059