Jessie/testing installed on dual SSD Raid 0

[Linadian]

I found Jessie to be a bit too flakey so I went with a Wheezy (stable) install, this fix works, Wheezy might be showing its age a bit but its smooth and solid.

This post is kind of a blog/howto of my fake/hardware Raid (Intel ICH10R) experience (see my sig for hardware details), if you try this with the net install snapshot CD (I tried to use the Debian KDE Live DVD 7.2 but it failed, researched suggested the net install snapshot CD), you will need an internet connection, there will be some software downloading during the install, my connection is about 1.2MB/sec so it went relatively fast.

***If you are going to try this, print this out first as kind of a guide***

I downloaded the net install 'CD' Jessie/testing 'snapshot' (Dec 12, 2013), created a raw Raid 0 volume 'drive' with the Intel (ICH10R) Raid BIOS utility (named the volume "debian", do NOT put a number at the end of the volume name, it will cause problems later, Linux/Debian adds a number to the end of the volume name later for fstab reasons), (here comes the important part) formatted the Raid 0 volume to a bootable NTFS Win partition with a 3rd party utility disk (Ultimate Boot CD 5.11/Seagate Discwizard 11.x, if that won't work, use the Western Digital utility in the same sub-menu), the Debian installer will later overwrite the partition for its own use, I think it just likes the volume structure to be in place first, this works, I don't know why, have been struggling to get Debian on my 'fake/hardware' Raid for years but I'm not a nuts and bolts code writer, just a tinkerer, experimenter.

This next step is also very important or it won't work, boot the install CD, scroll to either Install or Graphical Install, DO NOT HIT ENTER YET, press the Tab key, add to the end of the already existing boot parameters, this text:

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dmraid=true

make sure you leave a space between dmraid=true and the last command in the list, once you have that in, you can press Enter to start the install, no need to go back to the main menu, this allows the installer to 'see' your fake/hardware Raid and treat it like any other single HDD/SSD.

When you get to the 'where to install to' screen, choose the Raid (it will have a big long crazy name, something like this: /dev/mapper/isw_bfafadacjc_debian, just an example, yours will be different), now since I am lazy and the custom partitioning drives me nuts, I choose 'automatic partitioning, use whole disk'. Let the Grub installer install Grub to the Raid boot sector, if that fails, use this fix OR install Grub to a non-raid drive set to boot in the BIOS and the boot flag set on its partition, for some reason if you mess up the Raid install, you have to format the Raid volume with the utility again to get Grub back on the Raid 0 boot sector, otherwise installing Grub during a second install attempt without reformatting the Raid volume again to a non-raid bootable drive works.

If you are not fond of Gnome (I personally prefer KDE) and the command line doesn't scare you (before you do this you could print out many useful Debian command line docs, using apt, command line file editing, etc, make sure the docs are relevant, they leave old docs up for legacy users/systems admins), you could choose just the base system and base tools only, I unchecked 'Desktop' (which installs Gnome, the menu doesn't say Gnome) and unchecked Printer Server, my printer is personal to my machine, I don't need my machine to be a printer server, a simple CUPS set up is fine once the system is running.

If you make it in to the Raid command line, lol, type

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su

hit Enter, you will be asked for root's password, (su=switch user) there is NO sudo installed yet (the net install is different from a full blown Live DVD or full 3 DVD set install, it's very basic) so you have to do initial system changing operations as root, once you are root, type

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apt-get update

hit Enter, when apt is done updating its available software list, type

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apt-get install kde-standard

(I prefer 'standard', if you want bloat and tons of background stuff to shut off later install 'kde-full', lol), hit Enter, when the KDE desktop install is finished, you are still root, as root type

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halt

(shutdown) or

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reboot

hit Enter, make sure you take the 'CD' out of the optical drive during the reboot, you should boot back in to a brand new Raid GUI KDE login in screen, type your user account name, type your pw, you are now in a pure KDE/Debian Raid 0 desktop, add yourself to some groups (cdrom, lpadmin, sudo for example, the package "kuser" is good for this) and configure permissions to automount other drives, etc, this isn't Kubuntu where all of that is already done for you, Debian is an old school base system, which I am very glad it stuck to its roots (no pun intended), one of the reasons I left Windows and Kubuntu was too much hand holding and creeping towards proprietary (Ubuntu).

Thanks for reading, if you try this, I hope you get it working, it worked for me.

If you have an nVidia GPU like mine, the Jessie/testing driver install works, print the driver install instruction doc and follow them exactly (only some of it is relevant, print it out, read it thoroughly and use a highlighter to highlight what pertains to you, it will make it easier, I used the 304.88 Wheezy instructions), it looks and sounds complicated but it's really not, the nVidia driver install has to block the GNU/GPL nouveau driver from loading on the next boot via a config file (the installer made the file for me, I checked before rebooting) or you are in the command line again. I will be posting how to turn off PowerMizer, watch for it.

Keep in mind, this is "testing" so don't get alarmed at the occassional OS burp or fart, I found a re-login or even a reboot in extreme cases works. Here's a huge tip, go to KDE System Settings-->Power Management-->Button events handling, select shutdown, that way if the desktop locks up, you just give the main power button a quick press (not the old school 4 seconds), the system will take a minute to shutdown but at least it's clean shutdown.

Also, if you install gnome-disk-utility, DO NOT enable/set HDD/SSD power management standby/spindown options, it locked me up every 15 minutes until I figured out what was causing it.

Admins, this is my first post and I don't see anywhere to add tags (if it's available), feel free to ad appropriate tags, thank you.