Anyone have F11 working with ICH9 RAID?

[Joe Christy]

   To answer my query of 2009-07-12 14:54:
> Does anyone have F11 installed onto an x86_64 machine with Intel fake
> RAID - Intel Matrix Storage Manager - ICH9?

	Yes, I do now.

> When F10 failed to recognize the controller in RAID mode, I turned it
> off in the BIOS, and now the F11 install DVD does see the controller,
> but appears to get confused about why there is mdraid (my kludge to get
> RAID on my system) behind a dmraid controller.
>...

	... and that was precisely the problem. F10 dmraid was incapable of 
detecting the BIOS RAID controller in my laptop (though apparently F9 
was, and F11 definitely is). While the Intel/Lenovo docs don't mention 
it, the Intel Matrix Storage Manager does, however, write some meta-data 
to the disk header, so merely turning off RAID in the BIOS was not The 
Right Thing To Do. The F11 install medium comes along and sees both the 
Intel meta-data [ => dmraid] and the mdraid meta-data, and the 
combination causes it to descend through confusion into madness.

	The solution was to boot up one last time in F10 and use mdadm to zero 
out the mdraid meta-data & my data. Next, go into the BIOS and re-enable 
RAID. Even if you have done The Right Thing previously and clobbered the 
BIOS RAID meta-data at F10 install, the Intel/Lenovo docs _do_ explain 
how to re-write it (and switch between RAID 0 and Raid 1, if you wish). 
Cf. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=510772 for more detail.

	At that point, F11 anaconda sees only the BIOS RAID and happily 
proceeds with the install, and I'm able to restore my stuff from backups.

  	I foolishly forgot to do before after benchmarks, but it feels at 
least as responsive as F10 with mdraid and, to me, is intellectually 
more satisfying.

	YMMV,
		Joe

-- 
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