[clue-tech] Need new hardware (was two monitors)

[erik at ezolan.com]

> Unfortunately, I've been burning the candle at both ends and have been
> doing lots of stupid things lately, more than my usual quotient.

My worst screwups was when I was tired, and decided to "Just finish it and
be done for the night."

> (OT) Popped FC5 in, set up software RAID and (lazy me) told it to install
> everything.  85% of the way through disk 1 it had a media error.  Tested
> the
> CD - sure enough.  Coaster.  Burned a new one.  Tested it - coaster.
> checked the SHA1 hash on the download - matches (yes I should have done
> that
> first).  Ok, let's try a minimal install - that works.  Had no further
> issues with the CD.
>
> (SW RAID) 4 160GB SATAs.  deleted the default LVM0, created a 128GB raid
> partition on each disk.  Put swap and / on portions of the remainder -
> holding the rest in reserve.  Got through the entire install.
>
> booted.  got stuck at GRUB for 20 minutes.  Try again.
>
> I tried this a number of different ways:
> / on the RAID
> / on another disk
> with and without grub loader.

I looked around a bit, and found this recent thread on another LUG,
http://www.colug.net/pipermail/colug432/2006-May/002838.html

> Completed the install 2 or three times, but never got a boot.  Had a
> number
> of failures during the install from application errors.
>
> finally gave up and went into the BIOS and setup HW RAID.  While I was in
> there I poked around and fiddled with this and that.  (idiot!)

If you have to, then go ahead and use the HW RAID, but from the reviews
I've read (last year), SW RAID is better.

> Makes no sense that the RAID is related to the Xserver not starting
> properly
> (but first rule of debugging is to eliminate variables).  Obviously I've
> mucked something up in the BIOS which did not reset when I reloaded
> defaults.  odds are it has to do with disabling the onboard video.

I checked out your MB on the linux compatibility web page, it says the
video passed.

Erik Z