1) 2 disks showing up in the installer, although I've configured them as RAID1 mirror:
Strange, but usually when setting up a system on a configured 2-disk hardware-raid mirror, you only see one logical disk: The RAID1.
Not with the great Intel Rapid Storage "thing"! It seems that it's some kind of "pseudo-hardware RAID" which in fact is a softraid, handled by Intel drivers on the OS-side.
My conclusion was to ignore "stupid is as stupid does", and simply re-enter the RAID Bios during boot, revert the disks to non-raid and use Linux' real softraid instead.
I think it's better to use a well-known and stable softraid, than some messy and strange "actually-softraid-but-claims-to-be-hardware-raid".
The Debian installer supports initialization of software RAID during the disk partition step, although it might be a bit non-obvious:
- Create partitions on both disks as you would normally
- as "Use as" choose software RAID
- Make sure that you have matching partitions on both disks
If you choose it, you can then create the actual filesystems within the softraid partitions.
2) The HDD LED is always on, and there are strange timeouts...
This one's actually not related to the mainboard or Debian, but it's caused by the RAID1 mirror - during initial initialization.
Since I've got 1 TB disks mirrored in that system, it takes quite a while until it's synchronized. Therefore, the system is under constant heavy load during that time, and if you to a "top" process listing, you will see the following 2 processes up all the time:
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md1_raid1
md1_resync
So, don't worry... that's absolutely normal and supposed to be like that. After the RAID's synchronized, the system will be idle again.
I'm mentioning it here, because it scared the shit out of me, when a freshly installed box froze for half a minute after every 2nd command...
3) Lenny's kernel can't yet use the on-board network adapter out-of-the box:
That hurts. There's nothing more painful than getting kernel-drivers to work without network. And of course, that's the case here.
The network adapter is a "82578DC", which requires a e1000e kernel module.
Installation:
- Install kernel compilation prerequisite packages:
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apt-get install kernel-package kernel-header-2.6.26-2-686 build-essential - Download the driver's source (e1000e-1.2.8.tar.gz) from Intel's website.
- Unpack it: "tar -xzf e1000e-1.2.8.tar.gz"
- Change to the subdirectory "src" of the e1000e driver directory
- Run "make install" (as root - or use 'sudo')
- After successfull compilation and installation, load the module: "modprobe e1000e"
Additional experiences with other driver for this chipset:
There's a "Linux installation page for the DH57JG", which provides no information for Debian, except a link to a sourceforge project "Intel Wired Ethernet", which claims to provide the e1000e driver.
I've tried using the sourceforge driver, but trying to insmod the "ixgbe" module, results in the following error message:
Now I'm gonna try the e1000e driver provided by Intel (again, hidden well in the dungeons of their website):ixgbe: Unknown symbol dca_remove_requester
ixgbe: Unknown symbol dca_get_tag
ixgbe: Unknown symbol dca_add_requester
ixgbe: Unknown symbol dca_unregister_notify
ixgbe: Unknown symbol dca_register_notify
FATAL: Error inserting ixgbe (/lib/modules/2.6.26-2-686/kernel/drivers/net/ixgbe/ixgbe.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)
Network Adapter Driver for PCI-E Gigabit Network Connections under Linux (Why the hell are they making it so hard for users to find their drivers...?)