Does Fedora 29 support the Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) chip for hardware RAID? My new ThinkPad P72 came with an RST chip set up with two 2TB PCIe M.2 SSDs in a RAID1 config. The Fedora-29-MATE-Compiz spin DVD doesn't "see" it. Nor does Clonezilla.
There's a BIOS mode setting for the Intel RST: "RST" mode for RAID, and "AHCI" mode for separate SATA drives. Changing that setting to AHCI will probably break the RAID1 array and render the P72 unbootable. I don't know if that would a destructive, irreversible change, or if changing the mode setting back to RST would restore everything.
I've only tried the MATE spin. One purpose of this question is to find out if the full installation DVD supports the Intel RST chip.
--Doc Robert G. (Doc) Savage Fairview Heights, IL
"Perfection is the enemy of good enough." -- Admiral of the Fleet Sergei G. Gorshkov
On 11/30/18 2:24 PM, dsavage--- via users wrote:
Does Fedora 29 support the Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) chip for hardware RAID? My new ThinkPad P72 came with an RST chip set up with two 2TB PCIe M.2 SSDs in a RAID1 config. The Fedora-29-MATE-Compiz spin DVD doesn't "see" it. Nor does Clonezilla.
There's a BIOS mode setting for the Intel RST: "RST" mode for RAID, and "AHCI" mode for separate SATA drives. Changing that setting to AHCI will probably break the RAID1 array and render the P72 unbootable. I don't know if that would a destructive, irreversible change, or if changing the mode setting back to RST would restore everything.
I've only tried the MATE spin. One purpose of this question is to find out if the full installation DVD supports the Intel RST chip.
Yes, you can use RST with Fedora, but you have to import the RST metadata into mdadmin before you partition and install the OS. There are a number of articles out there you can read that describes the process. Google is your friend. Note that you'll use mdadmin to manage the RST stuff when running Linux and the RST tools that come with Windows when running Windows..
That being said, I've never done this in the installer as I never dual boot Windows and Linux using the same physical disks. For the (very) few times I must share a machine between the two, I have one set of disks for Windows and a separate set of disks for Linux.
In my world, Windows gets run in VMs with Linux as the host OS. Thus, I use mdadmin and its metadata natively for my RAID stuff as I don't have to share that metadata with Windows. Preferably, I use a _real_ RAID controller--but they can be expensive. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
On 11/30/18 2:24 PM, dsavage--- via users wrote:
Does Fedora 29 support the Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) chip for hardware RAID? My new ThinkPad P72 came with an RST chip set up with two 2TB PCIe M.2 SSDs in a RAID1 config. The Fedora-29-MATE-Compiz spin DVD doesn't "see" it. Nor does Clonezilla.
There's a BIOS mode setting for the Intel RST: "RST" mode for RAID, and "AHCI" mode for separate SATA drives. Changing that setting to AHCI will probably break the RAID1 array and render the P72 unbootable. I don't know if that would a destructive, irreversible change, or if changing the mode setting back to RST would restore everything.
I've only tried the MATE spin. One purpose of this question is to find out if the full installation DVD supports the Intel RST chip.
Yes, you can use RST with Fedora, but you have to import the RST metadata into mdadmin before you partition and install the OS. There are a number of articles out there you can read that describes the process. Google is your friend. Note that you'll use mdadmin to manage the RST stuff when running Linux and the RST tools that come with Windows when running Windows..
That being said, I've never done this in the installer as I never dual boot Windows and Linux using the same physical disks. For the (very) few times I must share a machine between the two, I have one set of disks for Windows and a separate set of disks for Linux.
In my world, Windows gets run in VMs with Linux as the host OS. Thus, I use mdadmin and its metadata natively for my RAID stuff as I don't have to share that metadata with Windows. Preferably, I use a _real_ RAID controller--but they can be expensive.
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 -
-
users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
Thanks Rick. Ultimately I plan to run this pre-installed Win10 in a VM under F29. The trick is to get a forensic copy of the existing pre-installed OS that I can read back into a VM using P2V. I'm not planning to dual boot. Note that this is a laptop (on steroids!), so using a "real" RAID controller is not feasible.
--Doc Robert G. (Doc) Savage Fairview Heights, IL
"Perfection is the enemy of good enough." -- Admiral of the Fleet Sergei G. Gorshkov
On 11/30/18 3:39 PM, dsavage--- via users wrote:
On 11/30/18 2:24 PM, dsavage--- via users wrote:
Does Fedora 29 support the Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) chip for hardware RAID? My new ThinkPad P72 came with an RST chip set up with two 2TB PCIe M.2 SSDs in a RAID1 config. The Fedora-29-MATE-Compiz spin DVD doesn't "see" it. Nor does Clonezilla.
There's a BIOS mode setting for the Intel RST: "RST" mode for RAID, and "AHCI" mode for separate SATA drives. Changing that setting to AHCI will probably break the RAID1 array and render the P72 unbootable. I don't know if that would a destructive, irreversible change, or if changing the mode setting back to RST would restore everything.
I've only tried the MATE spin. One purpose of this question is to find out if the full installation DVD supports the Intel RST chip.
Yes, you can use RST with Fedora, but you have to import the RST metadata into mdadmin before you partition and install the OS. There are a number of articles out there you can read that describes the process. Google is your friend. Note that you'll use mdadmin to manage the RST stuff when running Linux and the RST tools that come with Windows when running Windows..
That being said, I've never done this in the installer as I never dual boot Windows and Linux using the same physical disks. For the (very) few times I must share a machine between the two, I have one set of disks for Windows and a separate set of disks for Linux.
In my world, Windows gets run in VMs with Linux as the host OS. Thus, I use mdadmin and its metadata natively for my RAID stuff as I don't have to share that metadata with Windows. Preferably, I use a _real_ RAID controller--but they can be expensive.
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 -
-
users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
Thanks Rick. Ultimately I plan to run this pre-installed Win10 in a VM under F29. The trick is to get a forensic copy of the existing pre-installed OS that I can read back into a VM using P2V. I'm not planning to dual boot. Note that this is a laptop (on steroids!), so using a "real" RAID controller is not feasible.
Oh, hmmm. Yeah. See? There's still a place for desktop machines for doing weird stuff like this.
You should be able to use the Windows Security panel. There's a mechanism to do a disk image of the Windows 10 install. Here's a link:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-make-full-backup-windows-10
If that won't do what you want, I'd still use it to make a backup in case of disaster (DVDs are cheap, a spare hard drive in a USB box isn't that much, either).
The next step would be booting a live image of Fedora (whatever desktop you want) and use the command line to import the RST metadata into mdadm and create the RAID for Linux. You could then "dd" that new volume to media somewhere. Like I said, you need to be careful so you don't break the RST RAID, but it can be done. If you do break the RAID, you'd have the backup from the windowscentral.com website instructions to recreate it.
Oh, the wonders of technology! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - Okay, who put a "stop payment" on my reality check? - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
On 11/30/18 3:39 PM, dsavage--- via users wrote:
On 11/30/18 2:24 PM, dsavage--- via users wrote:
Does Fedora 29 support the Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) chip for hardware RAID? My new ThinkPad P72 came with an RST chip set up with two 2TB PCIe M.2 SSDs in a RAID1 config. The Fedora-29-MATE-Compiz spin DVD doesn't "see" it. Nor does Clonezilla.
There's a BIOS mode setting for the Intel RST: "RST" mode for RAID, and "AHCI" mode for separate SATA drives. Changing that setting to AHCI will probably break the RAID1 array and render the P72 unbootable. I don't know if that would a destructive, irreversible change, or if changing the mode setting back to RST would restore everything.
I've only tried the MATE spin. One purpose of this question is to find out if the full installation DVD supports the Intel RST chip.
Yes, you can use RST with Fedora, but you have to import the RST metadata into mdadmin before you partition and install the OS. There are a number of articles out there you can read that describes the process. Google is your friend. Note that you'll use mdadmin to manage the RST stuff when running Linux and the RST tools that come with Windows when running Windows..
That being said, I've never done this in the installer as I never dual boot Windows and Linux using the same physical disks. For the (very) few times I must share a machine between the two, I have one set of disks for Windows and a separate set of disks for Linux.
In my world, Windows gets run in VMs with Linux as the host OS. Thus, I use mdadmin and its metadata natively for my RAID stuff as I don't have to share that metadata with Windows. Preferably, I use a _real_ RAID controller--but they can be expensive.
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 -
-
users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
Thanks Rick. Ultimately I plan to run this pre-installed Win10 in a VM under F29. The trick is to get a forensic copy of the existing pre-installed OS that I can read back into a VM using P2V. I'm not planning to dual boot. Note that this is a laptop (on steroids!), so using a "real" RAID controller is not feasible.
Oh, hmmm. Yeah. See? There's still a place for desktop machines for doing weird stuff like this.
You should be able to use the Windows Security panel. There's a mechanism to do a disk image of the Windows 10 install. Here's a link:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-make-full-backup-windows-10
If that won't do what you want, I'd still use it to make a backup in case of disaster (DVDs are cheap, a spare hard drive in a USB box isn't that much, either).
The next step would be booting a live image of Fedora (whatever desktop you want) and use the command line to import the RST metadata into mdadm and create the RAID for Linux. You could then "dd" that new volume to media somewhere. Like I said, you need to be careful so you don't break the RST RAID, but it can be done. If you do break the RAID, you'd have the backup from the windowscentral.com website instructions to recreate it.
Oh, the wonders of technology!
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 -
-
Okay, who put a "stop payment" on my reality check? -
users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
And there's the problem, Rick. When I boot with the F29 MATE-Compiz live spin, it can't see the RAID1 array. There's nothing but the 'control' entry in /dev/mapper directory. There's no SSD (/dev/sda or /dev/sdb) visible to fdisk. And the only devices available in /dev/disks/by-* are those of the live image. I'm looking for any doorknob in the dark.
--Doc Robert G. (Doc) Savage Fairview Heights, IL
"Perfection is the enemy of good enough." -- Admiral of the Fleet Sergei G. Gorshkov
On 11/30/18 4:26 PM, dsavage--- via users wrote:
On 11/30/18 3:39 PM, dsavage--- via users wrote:
On 11/30/18 2:24 PM, dsavage--- via users wrote:
Does Fedora 29 support the Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) chip for hardware RAID? My new ThinkPad P72 came with an RST chip set up with two 2TB PCIe M.2 SSDs in a RAID1 config. The Fedora-29-MATE-Compiz spin DVD doesn't "see" it. Nor does Clonezilla.
There's a BIOS mode setting for the Intel RST: "RST" mode for RAID, and "AHCI" mode for separate SATA drives. Changing that setting to AHCI will probably break the RAID1 array and render the P72 unbootable. I don't know if that would a destructive, irreversible change, or if changing the mode setting back to RST would restore everything.
I've only tried the MATE spin. One purpose of this question is to find out if the full installation DVD supports the Intel RST chip.
Yes, you can use RST with Fedora, but you have to import the RST metadata into mdadmin before you partition and install the OS. There are a number of articles out there you can read that describes the process. Google is your friend. Note that you'll use mdadmin to manage the RST stuff when running Linux and the RST tools that come with Windows when running Windows..
That being said, I've never done this in the installer as I never dual boot Windows and Linux using the same physical disks. For the (very) few times I must share a machine between the two, I have one set of disks for Windows and a separate set of disks for Linux.
In my world, Windows gets run in VMs with Linux as the host OS. Thus, I use mdadmin and its metadata natively for my RAID stuff as I don't have to share that metadata with Windows. Preferably, I use a _real_ RAID controller--but they can be expensive.
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 -
-
users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
Thanks Rick. Ultimately I plan to run this pre-installed Win10 in a VM under F29. The trick is to get a forensic copy of the existing pre-installed OS that I can read back into a VM using P2V. I'm not planning to dual boot. Note that this is a laptop (on steroids!), so using a "real" RAID controller is not feasible.
Oh, hmmm. Yeah. See? There's still a place for desktop machines for doing weird stuff like this.
You should be able to use the Windows Security panel. There's a mechanism to do a disk image of the Windows 10 install. Here's a link:
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-make-full-backup-windows-10
If that won't do what you want, I'd still use it to make a backup in case of disaster (DVDs are cheap, a spare hard drive in a USB box isn't that much, either).
The next step would be booting a live image of Fedora (whatever desktop you want) and use the command line to import the RST metadata into mdadm and create the RAID for Linux. You could then "dd" that new volume to media somewhere. Like I said, you need to be careful so you don't break the RST RAID, but it can be done. If you do break the RAID, you'd have the backup from the windowscentral.com website instructions to recreate it.
Oh, the wonders of technology!
And there's the problem, Rick. When I boot with the F29 MATE-Compiz live spin, it can't see the RAID1 array. There's nothing but the 'control' entry in /dev/mapper directory. There's no SSD (/dev/sda or /dev/sdb) visible to fdisk. And the only devices available in /dev/disks/by-* are those of the live image. I'm looking for any doorknob in the dark.
Yes, Doc, I get it. Having never done this myself, I can only suggest things. I believe you'll need to run "mdadm --auto-detect -v" to see if it can find the RST RAID metadata. If it finds the RST data, it should create a container device that represents the RST array. You should then be able to create a device from that container (and I'd suggest a read- only device) using "mdadm -A" would represent the RST array.
Again, I've never done this with an Intel RST array and I'm not sure any of my machines lying about have this "feature" enabled so I can't do any investigation myself. mdadm says it can deal with it and a google search reveals some results with Mint and Scientific Linux. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - "You think that's tough? Try herding cats!" - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
On 11/30/18 2:24 PM, dsavage--- via users wrote:
Does Fedora 29 support the Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) chip for hardware RAID? My new ThinkPad P72 came with an RST chip set up with two 2TB PCIe M.2 SSDs in a RAID1 config. The Fedora-29-MATE-Compiz spin DVD doesn't "see" it. Nor does Clonezilla.
I've only seen this with a small flash drive and a large spinning drive. In the few cases I've run into this, I've turned off the RST to be able to install.
There's a BIOS mode setting for the Intel RST: "RST" mode for RAID, and "AHCI" mode for separate SATA drives. Changing that setting to AHCI will probably break the RAID1 array and render the P72 unbootable. I don't know if that would a destructive, irreversible change, or if changing the mode setting back to RST would restore everything.
At least in the ones I've worked with, turning RST off in the BIOS does not corrupt anything. But they've been in a much different configuration than you have.
On 12/03/2018 Rick Stevens ricks@alldigital.com wrote:
Yes, Doc, I get it. Having never done this myself, I can only suggest things. I believe you'll need to run "mdadm --auto-detect -v" to see if it can find the RST RAID metadata. If it finds the RST data, it should create a container device that represents the RST array. You should then be able to create a device from that container (and I'd suggest a read- only device) using "mdadm -A" would represent the RST array.
Again, I've never done this with an Intel RST array and I'm not sure any of my machines lying about have this "feature" enabled so I can't do any investigation myself. mdadm says it can deal with it and a google search reveals some results with Mint and Scientific Linux.
- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com
- AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 226437340 Yahoo: origrps2
"You think that's tough? Try herding
cats!" -
users mailing list -- users@lists.fedoraproject.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users@lists.fedoraproject.org
Rick,
I'm still chipping away at this. I've had to solve a couple of blockers using Live ISO images. For example, I had to change a BIOS display setting from [Hybrid] to [Discrete] to get a proper X screen after the GNOME display manager starts. There was also a bug in thinkpad-acpi that I had to report to the developers.
I just booted the system using the Fedora-MATE_Compiz-Live-x86_64- Rawhide-20190217.n.0.iso image on a thumb drive. I was hoping that the latest 4.20 kernel might support the Intel RST. Running "mdadm --auto- detect -v" seemed to create a /dev/md0 block device, but "mdadm -- details /dev/md0" says it has no members.
The problem still seems to be the Intel RST chip tightly bound to the NVMe SSDs. I can break the factory RAID1 by changing the BIOS Storage setting from [RST] to [AHCI], but I'm not ready to pull that grenade pin just yet. There must be a non-destructive path to accessing the native NVMe interfaces without having to resort to SATA emulation.
--Doc
cit.: "Ultimately I plan to run this pre-installed Win10 in a VM under F29. The trick is to get a forensic copy of the existing pre-installed OS that I can read back into a VM using P2V"
maybe a hint: you are maybe able (raid: don't know) to boot your raw windows disk(s)/Partition(s) within a VM.
I do this with Virtualbox. My Windows lays on a second sata disk (1st and 2cd partition) and I do "sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ./Win_RAW.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sdb -partitions 1,2 -relative" to get a disk (~800 Bytes only) for my Vbox Windows VM config. the command creates 2 files: - Win_RAW.vmdk and - Win_RAW-pt.vmdk
the first one is your disk for your Window 10 Vbox-VM you need to chown the created files for your user running the VM, too.
fdisk -l: /dev/sdb1 * 2048 206847 204800 100M 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sdb2 206848 41019391 40812544 19,5G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
here, sdb1 is the boot partition and sdb2 the system partition from Windows 7/10
maybe a second hints: to have a disk image from your shiny new machine isn't a bad idea ( backup, sale in some years ?) - systemrescuecd - => fsarchiver - delete the Windows swap/hibernation files before doing an image !!!
P.S. more right: he above /dev/sdb is a lie/no more current since I moved my sda (F29 !) stuff to an nvme (Samsung Evo Plus => tested by phoronix.com), so a sata port came free and sdb went to sda.
cit: "There's no SSD (/dev/sda or /dev/sdb)"
in your first post you told that the box is equiped with PCIe M.2 SSDs
maybe I'm wrong (course no experiences with raid stuff), but I guest you should see your single disks as /dev/nvme0 and /dev/nvme1