[Feature Request] Add support for DM-RAID aka Dell DataSafe

[Jose De la Rosa]

Feature Request to add support for DM-RAID (aka Dell DataSafe) to Ubuntu installer. Currently, when DM-RAID is enabled (on systems that support it) and a RAID logical device is defined, the Ubuntu installer sees it as individual disks instead of one RAID logical device.

[Kyromaster (kyromaster)]

This also applies to all on-board RAID controllers found on nearly all current mainboards (VIA RAID/Intel Matrix Strorage/NVRaid). Since this is what most inexperienced users call RAID, and the "fakeraid" does work AFAIK on linux already (KNOPPIX displays me a /dev/mapper/via... device and the individual drives as /dev/sdx which is wrong but nevertheless...) it should be supported out-of-the-box in ubuntu.
Especially when people have a working windows installation on the RAID, try to install ubuntu using wubi and it just crashes on reboot.

[TAC one (tacone)]

This has been reported over and over. Please please please implement it. I had to chroot manually from the live cd. Everything works but some commands don't:

tacone@tacone-desktop:~/Projects/apache-foobar/src$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for tacone:
Unable to seek on /dev/sda

Even newbies shuold be able to enjoy raid :)

[TAC one (tacone)]

Reproduced on Intrepid livecd as well.

To install dmraid one has to:
- run livecd
- sudo apt-get install dmraid && sudo dmraid -ay
- sudo gparted and partition from there.
- run the wizard, deselecting bootloader installation (would crash)
- instead of rebooting, open a terminal and
   - bind the /dev /prov /sys etc to /target/dev, /target/proc, etc.
   - sudo chroot /target
   - apt-get install dmraid && dmraid -ay
   - copy manually grub inside /boot
   - type grub, and setup manually the bootloader.
- exit everything and reboot.

This shouldn't be so hard to do in the automatic installation.

[Erik Engberg (erik-engberg)]

Adding out-of-the-box installation support for any systems using consumer fakeraid solutions should be really HIGH priority. It is getting very common and I know several people who passed over ubuntu due to lack of support for this.

I'm not even sure myself if I want to use ubuntu on my new home system now...

[Jerone Young (jerone)]

To simply this the understanding of this request. The request is to have the GUI installer have the ability to:
                  - detect software raid volumes
                  - configure software raid volumes

This is done today by the alternate installer, but the request is to have this funcationality in the GUI installer.

[TAC one (tacone)]

I have a gut feeling it won't happen soon.

[Jerone Young (jerone)]

To add mor info here. The Dell DataSafe solution uses software raid with Raid 1 (mirroring).

[TAC one (tacone)]

On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 2:50 AM, Jerone Young <email address hidden> wrote:
> To add mor info here. The Dell DataSafe solution uses software raid with
> Raid 1 (mirroring).

Some Dell XPS 420 hard disk uses data striping (RAID 0)

[Mario Limonciello (superm1)]

DM Raid is now supported in 9.10. The Dell factory implementation needs to be worked out / tested yet. There might still need to be some changes to the Ubuntu implementation of this due to that, and new bugs will be opened as necessary if this is the case.

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[Timothy R. Chavez (timrchavez)]

The bug task for the somerville project has been removed by an automated script. This bug has been cloned on that project and is available here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1305488