Troubleshooting a problem install

[Jamon Camisso]

Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Hello all.
> 
> I'm having problems installing Kubuntu on a server system. (Tried 6.10,
> I'm presently downloading the 6.06.1 DVD) I haven't been given any
> manuals for the motherboard but it has two SATA drives installed (that
> I've been asked to set up as mirrors) and I'd heard those could be
> problems. Right now, booting the alternate-install 6.10 CD causes a
> hardware freeze a few lines into the boot process.

Sounds exactly like a problem I was having with an install for a friend 
a while back. Turns out it was a matter of making sure the cdrom was on 
the proper IDE channel (not the extra E-IDE on board that looked like it 
was the primary). That and making sure to turn off RAID in the BIOS as 
you want Linux to look after that.

> About 30 minutes of searching the Ubuntu site (support and community), I
> hadn't found any resources on how to deal with problems installs
> (special lilo/grub parameters, etc). Can someone please point me to any
> pages that might offer some troubleshooting help in this regard?

Best bet is to create a small 100mb or so partition on the start of each 
SATA drive. Make sure they are the same size. Use the partition on the 
primary drive as a regular /boot partition and the other as nothing. 
Then configure the rest of both discs as raid/lvm and run the create 
raid script in the alternate DVD. It will let you choose from RAID-0,1,5 
IIRC. Then you go back, format the newly created volume with ext3 (of 
course!) and proceed with the install.

> Also: are there any Ubuntu-specific resources regarding RAID or LVM?

If you found the alternate cd/dvd, that's really all you need. Any 
reseource on RAID/LVM should provide enough supplementary material 
otherwise.

> PS: Yes, it's a server but I'm still installing a basic desktop. Once
> the thing is running smoothly, I'll set the default run level to one not
> using a GUI, but disk space is cheap and it's good to have it installed
> just in case...

But of course... Just make sure it runs Fluxbox :)

Jamon