ubuntu 64 bit smp with adaptect raid i2o 1020s controller

I assume you wanna run a 64 bit linux on a supermicro server with a dual processor xeon and raid-5 controller (adaptect 1020s + zcr card)

• installer will not recognize your hard disk, this is because the correct module is not probed when using 64bit version (it works correctly with 32bit 686-smp kernel); just switch to another console and do modprobe i2o_block then go back to installer and try again detecting hard disks
• at the end of the installation it will fail to install grub then you need some other step:
  1. chroot into the installing target partition
  2. add to the grub's device.map file the following line (hd0) /dev/i2o/hda
  3. run grub from command line specifing that new device.map file and install it manually
• continue installation system will reboot
• when booting again system will fail again since now its your harddisk's initrd.img that fail to load I2O controller modules, you have to:
  1. chroot into the target partition
  2. modifice modules inside /etc/mkinitramfs adding i2o_block to it
  3. recreate initrd (it fails using mkinitramfs -o newinitrd.img.gz) better using dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-VERSION_HERE
• try again... it may fails again since initrd.img does not create device nodes.. in such case you have to recreate initrd.img again adding a script ini "preinit" directories always under /etc/mkinitrams... this script should create devices under /dev/i2o/ for instance: mkdir /dev/i2o
mknod /dev/i2o/hda b 80 0
mknod /dev/i2o/hda2 b 80 1
mknod /dev/i2o/hda2 b 80 2
...
...


Final notes:

the kernel from ubuntu 5.10 breezy seems bugged about this driver ONLY using 64bit version (i repeat: 32bit rocks), then better using kernel from dapper

i posted a bug about i2o not recognized at boot time several time... hope they'll fixit it with dapper