I love Ubuntu, it is really a first class Linux distro, and I could never see my self going back to Windows. However, there are some rough edges. Yesterday I got all new guys for my desktop/server box, and spend 2 hours carefully assembling it. I grab an Ubuntu CD and head off to install. I now had 4 80GB SATA 2 drives that intended on putting together in a RAID 5 array, for a blazing fast 220GB of fault-protected storage. 14 hours later at 4:05 am, I headed to bed while my system updated. Why did it take 14 hours to install Ubuntu? Well, it seems that Linux doesn't play nice with the fake raid on nforce mother boards, (yeah i know about, dmraid, but have you ever tried to install it?) Some how the first time I installed it, it crashed pretty hard, and the system seg-faulted on boot. So I went to format and reinstall, and I couldn't get linux to forget about the old array, which was now corrupt. I even went so far as to use a Windows boot disk to format and stat a windows install on each drive individually. I finally resorted to plugging in the drives one at a time, installing ubuntu (ok, so I'd cut the power after it started downloading packages). That finally did the trick. I will say however that there needs to be a good tool to completely wipe a set of drives, as in factory condition nothing at all on the disk.
Labels: linux
