OpenSUSE Linux 10.2

[postmortemIA]

Just released on 7th December

As a interesting addition (new feature), now it recognizes various RAID motherboard chipsets (ICH5/6/7R, NVRAID, VIARAID to name a few), so you can install Linux on a RAID device- makes it run much faster due to lots of I/O traffic in Linux. Linux distros have struggled with this for a long time, there was no RAID support for omnipresent mobo RAID chipsets.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

cool

 

[IvanAndreevich]

Nice! I'll be reinstalling OS'es on my lappy over the holidays

 

[suffah]

i just grabbed 10.0 not too long ago, oh well, 10.2 here i come!

 

[Nothinman]

so you can install Linux on a RAID device- makes it run much faster due to lots of I/O traffic in Linux. Linux distros have struggled with this for a long time, there was no RAID support for omnipresent mobo RAID chipsets.

Linux has been able to install on them for years, the problem is that those 'omnipresent RAID chipsets' are crap and do all of their work in the driver so they're almost exactly the same as software RAID except without the ability to move the RAID set into another machine easily. It was and still is a better idea to just use Linux software RAID and ignore the onboard stuff, the only reason to even consider it is if you've already got Windows setup on them and don't want to mess with that.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

so you can install Linux on a RAID device- makes it run much faster due to lots of I/O traffic in Linux. Linux distros have struggled with this for a long time, there was no RAID support for omnipresent mobo RAID chipsets.

Linux has been able to install on them for years, the problem is that those 'omnipresent RAID chipsets' are crap and do all of their work in the driver so they're almost exactly the same as software RAID except without the ability to move the RAID set into another machine easily. It was and still is a better idea to just use Linux software RAID and ignore the onboard stuff, the only reason to even consider it is if you've already got Windows setup on them and don't want to mess with that.

We fought about this already:

A. These RAID devices are cheap, most people don't need $200 RAID card
B. They work well because they don't have to use PCI bus
C. They work just fine on Windows
D. Windows has 96% market share

 

[Nothinman]

A. So? They work just fine in Linux too.
B. So? They work just fine in Linux too.
C. So? They work just fine in Linux too.
D. How is that relevant at all?

 

[doog519]

10.2 is suppose to have support for raid. And the 64 bit is suppose to fly.

I'm in the process of DLing the 64 bit right now.

 

[nweaver]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: Nothinman

so you can install Linux on a RAID device- makes it run much faster due to lots of I/O traffic in Linux. Linux distros have struggled with this for a long time, there was no RAID support for omnipresent mobo RAID chipsets.

Linux has been able to install on them for years, the problem is that those 'omnipresent RAID chipsets' are crap and do all of their work in the driver so they're almost exactly the same as software RAID except without the ability to move the RAID set into another machine easily. It was and still is a better idea to just use Linux software RAID and ignore the onboard stuff, the only reason to even consider it is if you've already got Windows setup on them and don't want to mess with that.

We fought about this already:

A. These RAID devices are cheap, most people don't need $200 RAID card
B. They work well because they don't have to use PCI bus
C. They work just fine on Windows
D. Windows has 96% market share

Yes, it's called winraid....

Oh, and as an FYI, software raid on Linux would probably spank the crap out of those craptastic solutions....except

1. Portable, can be moved to most ANY linux system
2. Expandable, can add drives, run other raid levels
3. Reliable. S/W raid in linux has been around the block, and shown it's a good, stable way to do things.


btw, point C, works fine on windows, tell that too all those people who didn't build their new computer with a floppy....When I was using crappy winraid, it drove me nuts, I wanted to pop the F6 key of my freakin keyboard.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: nweaver

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: Nothinman

so you can install Linux on a RAID device- makes it run much faster due to lots of I/O traffic in Linux. Linux distros have struggled with this for a long time, there was no RAID support for omnipresent mobo RAID chipsets.

Linux has been able to install on them for years, the problem is that those 'omnipresent RAID chipsets' are crap and do all of their work in the driver so they're almost exactly the same as software RAID except without the ability to move the RAID set into another machine easily. It was and still is a better idea to just use Linux software RAID and ignore the onboard stuff, the only reason to even consider it is if you've already got Windows setup on them and don't want to mess with that.

We fought about this already:

A. These RAID devices are cheap, most people don't need $200 RAID card
B. They work well because they don't have to use PCI bus
C. They work just fine on Windows
D. Windows has 96% market share

Yes, it's called winraid....

Oh, and as an FYI, software raid on Linux would probably spank the crap out of those craptastic solutions....except

1. Portable, can be moved to most ANY linux system
2. Expandable, can add drives, run other raid levels
3. Reliable. S/W raid in linux has been around the block, and shown it's a good, stable way to do things.


btw, point C, works fine on windows, tell that too all those people who didn't build their new computer with a floppy....When I was using crappy winraid, it drove me nuts, I wanted to pop the F6 key of my freakin keyboard.

You hard-core Linux users are so unrealistic and unable to get the point.
Yes, it is a powerful, but portable- can be used in any Linux system, and none of the others? You mean it doesn't matter that you can't use it on Windows, do I have to remind you of market share again... it is the fact: most Linux users have need to use Windows, if just for gaming.

Why is mobo RAID crappy? Because you think your soft RAID is better? I have no issue with it whatsoever, and I have been using it for years.

It is easy to prove it is faster, as it directly accesses the south bridge.

As for floppy-guess what- you can integrate your drivers with Windows CD.

Solution that works on both platforms is winning solution, and now thanks to dmraid implemented in SUSE and Fedora Core installers, it is not the Linux soft RAID. I can now enjoy RAID0 on two Raptors performance both on Win XP and SUSE. Before I couldn't do that, thus at least for us with mobo RAID this is fine solution.

 

[Nothinman]

Why is mobo RAID crappy?

Because it's all done in software, there hardware is just a normal PATA/SATA controller with a very little bit of firmware magic to make it bootable. The reason they always show up as 2 drives instead of a RAID set in Linux is because there is no hardware RAID set.

I have no issue with it whatsoever, and I have been using it for years.

Lots of people have said the same thing about Win95, McDonald's food, etc.

It is easy to prove it is faster, as it directly accesses the south bridge.

Please do then, it should only take a few hours to install a system and benchmark it with both setups.

As for floppy-guess what- you can integrate your drivers with Windows CD.

Which requires a working Windows installation to start with, if you only have one machine you're pretty screwed.

 

[drag]

Linux MD Raid is superior in almost all respects to these onboard motherboard RAID devices.
_you_don't_want_to_use_them_unless_you_have_too_.

Seriously. You don't.

Advantages to Linux software raid over inexpensive SATA raid devices:
- it is faster
- it will use less resources
- it is more reliable
- it is more compatable
- it is much more flexible
- it doesn't require special hardware to support it
- you can transfer it to another computer
- you can have hotspare devices
- you can support a wider veriaty of types of raid. Raid 5, Raid 1, Raid 0, Raid 10, etc etc.
- you can combine different devices together.
- you can expand a array with new drives.

For instance right now I ahve a software raid array for home it consists like this:
onboard IDE device: 120 gig
2 cheap SATA to PCI adapters; 4 120 gig drives.
One big RAID 5 array. Works great. Originally only had 4 120gig drives, but I expanded the array for extra capacity.

(5 or 6 dirves is about as big as you want with Raid 5. After that you want to go with more expensive Raid 10 and such because the usefullness of the raid 5 falls on it's face after that.)


The advantage of onboard raid over Linux software raid:
- it works with Windows.

Linux software raid is even faster then hardware raid (generally speaking. Nothing can touch the very expensive stuff) However the major downside is that it saturates the PCI bus bandwidth. With newer PCIe devices and multicore cpu cores then the reasons for not using Linux software raid is less and less. Other disavantages to Linux software raid is that it lacks a lot of the data protection and hotswapability you can get with special hardware raid cards.

http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html explains why normal Linux doesn't support your raid devices as raid devices.

Here is a pretty extensive test of Linux software raid vs real hardware raid
http://spamaps.org/raidtests.php


linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html
This page has a fairly extensive list of SATA raid cards and their drivers, about which ones are fakeraid vs hardware raid. Remember there is still good reasons to get hardware raid, but many people mislable their devices or try to use fancy words like 'host raid' to describe software raid with special drivers.

All your onboard stuff is is software raid with special drivers, MD software raid is much more mature and usefull.

 

[postmortemIA]

okay, lets try again for linux users who don't get facts:

linux raid: limited to PCI bus speed
mobo RAID: not limited to PCI bus speed

do you need me to explain to you that 1 < 2 ??

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

okay, lets try again for linux users who don't get facts:

linux raid: limited to PCI bus speed
mobo RAID: not limited to PCI bus speed[

So your going to run the 4-5 drives on that onboard RAID that it would take to max out normal PCI bus speeds?
(and it still is faster)

Also with PCIe that is pretty much irrelevent also.

 

[R3MF]

nice move by SUSE, more options is always good.

 

[Nothinman]

okay, lets try again for linux users who don't get facts:

linux raid: limited to PCI bus speed
mobo RAID: not limited to PCI bus speed

do you need me to explain to you that 1 < 2 ??

Since they're both using the exact same hardware how is that? And once again, you're the one with the hardware so why not provide some benchmarks to prove your point?

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

okay, lets try again for linux users who don't get facts:

linux raid: limited to PCI bus speed
mobo RAID: not limited to PCI bus speed

do you need me to explain to you that 1 < 2 ??

Since they're both using the exact same hardware how is that? And once again, you're the one with the hardware so why not provide some benchmarks to prove your point?

Since you and others claim that Linux soft raid is better regardless of device where it is.

 

[Nothinman]

Since you and others claim that Linux soft raid is better regardless of device where it is.

Of course not, I would gladly use real hardware RAID on something like a cciss controller.

 

[drag]

Yeah. Good hardware raid is the way to go if you have the money for it.

Nvraid/motherboard devices or cheap (your average sub-300 dollar) SATA raid devices are not good hardware raid.

(they can make pretty good disk controllers though. Although I much would prefer to get something that supports AHCI well, as per some types of onboard Intel SATA controllers, which would kick butt with md raid)