Description of problem: Users with ATA RAID controllers may find that the hardware RAID doesn't work if the controller is not one of those currently supported by dmraid (dmraid -l produces a list of supported devices). I'm not sure what the recommended process is for unsupported ATA RAID devices - vendor-provided Fedora driver disks seem rare.
Blogging master tracker for FC5 relnotes. Who would be the beat writer to own this info and track down the facts?
I am not the beat writer. However, I have been paying attention to this issue. Under FC4 the usual advice was to not configure the RAID array in the BIOS and to use software RAID instead if the controller was not supported by dmraid. Of course this needs to be confirmed for FC5. Stuart has told me that the dmraid developer is Heinz Mauelshagen, and the contact point is the ata-raid list: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ataraid-list I'd volunteer to put this to bed, but I am away from home on a business trip and can't promise to have any time available until Saturday.
Feel free to check into the beat when you get available: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Docs/Beats/Kernel If you don't see the information there, or it needs some additional info, go ahead and add it. There may still be time by this weekend to get the info in the ISO for test3. We also publish a latest version of the relnotes that is linked from the top of the relnotes in the ISO. Thanks.
This thread on the development mailing list may also be useful: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2006-February/msg00339.html
Admonition included in the Installer beat: Anaconda now supports installation on several IDE software RAID chipsets using dmraid. To disable this feature, add the nodmraid option at the boot: prompt. For more information, refer to [WWW] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DmraidStatus . * /!\ Do not boot only half of a dmraid RAID1 (mirror) Various situations may occur that cause dmraid to break the mirror, and if you boot in read/write mode into only one of the mirrored disks, it causes the disks to fall out of sync. No symptoms arise, since the primary disk is reading and writing to itself. But if you attempt to re-establish the mirror without first synchronizing the disks, you could corrupt the data and have to reinstall from scratch without a chance for recovery. If the mirror is broken, you should be able to resync from within the RAID chipset BIOS or by using the dd command. Reinstallation is always an option.