Grendelmon
December 20th, 2008, 04:28 PM
Hello all,
I've been banging my head with this problem for quite some time and I'm about to give up. I've searched high and low and can't seem to figure out if either 1) I'm doing something wrong or 2) this just isn't possible (or I'm making this harder than it really should be).
I built a gaming PC about two years ago with a Core 2 Duo, ASUS SLI motherboard, dual nVidia cards, and dual 80gb SATA hard drives running Windows XP Pro 64-bit in RAID 1 (striped). I used RAID so that my gaming maps would load faster (Battlefield, COD, etc.) It worked great (although I've had my share of Windows problems) but recently dove into using Linux as my OS of choice (I used to be a big Mac head, and then got an EEE using Xubuntu). So instead of fighting with my RAID to get Linux running on a separate partition, I thought it would be simpler if I just dropped another SATA drive to dedicate for Ubuntu. So, to cut to the chase, here's my current hardware:
ASUS P5N32-SLI Delux motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 (1.86gz)
3gb 667mhz RAM
(2) EVGA nVidia 9600GT pci-x video cards SLI bridged
(2) 80gb Seagate SATA drives RAID 1 striped (XP 64-bit Pro installed)
(1) 320gb WD SATA drive
My headache is GRUB. The problem I ran into was that the dual 80gb Seagate drives were using interfaces 0 and 1 out of the 8 SATA spots on the motherboard. I dropped the WD drive and it was using interface 2 (the third). When I installed Ubuntu, it was successful until it got to rebooting and GRUB started reporting "Error 21." I booted from the LiveCD, tried to repair GRUB by performing the "find /boot/grub/stage1" , etc. GRUB would find the device (something hd2,2), and root and setup were successful, until I would reboot again and still get "Error 21."
I couldn't recover my Windows XP at that point. Booting off the XP disc and performing a recover with FIXBOOT and FIXMBR said it worked but when I restarted the BIOS complained there was no valid system disk. I'm thinking it had something to do with using the nVidia RAID drivers and the recover really didn't fix anything.
Ugh. I went into my BIOS, changed the boot order of the hard disks so the primary was my WD with Ubuntu. Booted off LiveCD and tried to repair GRUB again. Rebooted and GRUB still gave errors (17, 21, 22, I honestly don't remember).
So I popped open the box and switch the SATA interfaces around. I stuck the WD Ubuntu drive in #0, and my RAID drives in #1 and #2. I switched the BIOS again to make sure the WD was primary boot. Reinstalled Ubuntu. Same problem. Then my process gets fuzzy because I started trying so many different things. I can't exactly recall everything that I did now. So I eventually wiped the RAID and reinstalled XP. So XP boots now, Ubuntu is still on the WD but I don't have GRUB installed. So I'm not really sure what the problem is.
Can someone suggest a way to configure my hardware to make this easier, or is this just a bad idea? I appreciate any suggestions or tips.
Grendelmon
**EDIT**
I am using RAID 0, striped. Also I've tried Ubuntu/Kubuntu 7.10 and 8.10
I've been banging my head with this problem for quite some time and I'm about to give up. I've searched high and low and can't seem to figure out if either 1) I'm doing something wrong or 2) this just isn't possible (or I'm making this harder than it really should be).
I built a gaming PC about two years ago with a Core 2 Duo, ASUS SLI motherboard, dual nVidia cards, and dual 80gb SATA hard drives running Windows XP Pro 64-bit in RAID 1 (striped). I used RAID so that my gaming maps would load faster (Battlefield, COD, etc.) It worked great (although I've had my share of Windows problems) but recently dove into using Linux as my OS of choice (I used to be a big Mac head, and then got an EEE using Xubuntu). So instead of fighting with my RAID to get Linux running on a separate partition, I thought it would be simpler if I just dropped another SATA drive to dedicate for Ubuntu. So, to cut to the chase, here's my current hardware:
ASUS P5N32-SLI Delux motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo 6400 (1.86gz)
3gb 667mhz RAM
(2) EVGA nVidia 9600GT pci-x video cards SLI bridged
(2) 80gb Seagate SATA drives RAID 1 striped (XP 64-bit Pro installed)
(1) 320gb WD SATA drive
My headache is GRUB. The problem I ran into was that the dual 80gb Seagate drives were using interfaces 0 and 1 out of the 8 SATA spots on the motherboard. I dropped the WD drive and it was using interface 2 (the third). When I installed Ubuntu, it was successful until it got to rebooting and GRUB started reporting "Error 21." I booted from the LiveCD, tried to repair GRUB by performing the "find /boot/grub/stage1" , etc. GRUB would find the device (something hd2,2), and root and setup were successful, until I would reboot again and still get "Error 21."
I couldn't recover my Windows XP at that point. Booting off the XP disc and performing a recover with FIXBOOT and FIXMBR said it worked but when I restarted the BIOS complained there was no valid system disk. I'm thinking it had something to do with using the nVidia RAID drivers and the recover really didn't fix anything.
Ugh. I went into my BIOS, changed the boot order of the hard disks so the primary was my WD with Ubuntu. Booted off LiveCD and tried to repair GRUB again. Rebooted and GRUB still gave errors (17, 21, 22, I honestly don't remember).
So I popped open the box and switch the SATA interfaces around. I stuck the WD Ubuntu drive in #0, and my RAID drives in #1 and #2. I switched the BIOS again to make sure the WD was primary boot. Reinstalled Ubuntu. Same problem. Then my process gets fuzzy because I started trying so many different things. I can't exactly recall everything that I did now. So I eventually wiped the RAID and reinstalled XP. So XP boots now, Ubuntu is still on the WD but I don't have GRUB installed. So I'm not really sure what the problem is.
Can someone suggest a way to configure my hardware to make this easier, or is this just a bad idea? I appreciate any suggestions or tips.
Grendelmon
**EDIT**
I am using RAID 0, striped. Also I've tried Ubuntu/Kubuntu 7.10 and 8.10