OM Lx 3.03/4.0 installation with a Intel Optane device

Development Development Testing
1

Hello,

Upon installation of OM LX 3.03 in a laptop with intel optane 16GB device (system accelerator), in live mode I’ve noticed that if I choose the RAID option, intel optane is not shown at partitionmanager, if I choose AHCI at bios setup, intel optane is shown as an individual device in partitionmanager.

The computer has a 480GB m.2 SSD + a 1TB (with 8GB SSD as cache) HDD and an intel optane 16GB m.2 SSD for system acceleration.

Do anyone have a clue on which option to choose at bios (RAID or AHCI)? An unactivated Windows 10 came with the computer and it boots only if RAID is set.

Thanks

  • Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…):

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1 Like
2

Developers are working on Lx 4.0 now it would make more sense for you to be doing this with Lx 4.0 if you want developer help.

3

Ok. But these questions are independent of OM release, i think.

1 Like
4

I just closed the other thread so let’s continue discussion here.

5

One of our devs (crazy) found this which is a must read for anyone trying to use Optane in Linux. And FAQ for Optane.

Also information from IRC:

< crazy > ben79: so far I can tell : for from BIOS RAID option you’ll need : Intel® RST drivers and Intel® RST program … ( that guy just need to search in Intel FAQ lol ) … which again seems to just exists for $MS

< crazy > ben79: however you can use the Intel Optane storage into your sw RAID or hw RAID ( if you got an controller ) also Intel suggest >16GB ones … 16GB seems to be considered Mainstream foobar even from Intel

6

OM is Linux and questions and answers about Linux frequently do apply. Seems like a lot of OM users have a misconception about this. Any distro has some things that are different or that they configure differently so not everything is the same but a lot is. Most (almost all) software comes from somewhere (“upstream”) on the internet and is repackaged by the various distros so there is a lot of commonality.

There is a reason why when users ask questions here you’ll see me or other helpers or devs quote from Arch Linux, Fedora, Ubuntu, or other distro documentation. We find answers where we find them.

Regarding Optane I can assure that OM has done no work on this so anything that works will be common to other Linux distros at this time. Whether any special configuration develops is for the future. Post-edit: And also this is another reason I am encouraging that you proceed with working on this in Lx 4.0.

7

Moving thread to Development Testing as this is a very new feature for OpenMandriva. Would seem to be a good thing if we can get it to work for our users.

Maybe it already does work and is simply a question of correct setup, I don’t know yet.

8

Well no way to support the technique as is meant to work in Linux.

And not because we do not want to support it but because Intel decided to
just support Windows…

See :

So IF and only IF Intel changes mind ( which I doubt ) we can start to suport that.

2 Likes
9

Is it to late to trade it in for a Ryzen laptop with loads of RAM?

10

Well, Ben posted a link from a Intel Guy where one can find scripts to use optane in Linux. No partitioning is addressed there however

1 Like
11

What I posted came form @abucodonosor on IRC. Well at least I think they are same person.

Note: Intel® Optane™ Memory doesn’t support system acceleration of a RAID configuration.

12

@adelson.oliveira

You can use the Optane driver as storage or a cache for an LVM2 configuration ,
cache for slow HDD/SSD but it won’t work as system accelerator in Linux.

There are not drivers for Linux .
( I assume we need kernel drivers for that to work + some userspace util for the setup)

However that Intel FAQ will tell you all that … Please read up first.

…
Is Linux supported when using Intel* ® Optane ™ memory for system acceleration?

No, the accelerated SATA drive must be running Windows 10 64-bit.

…

13

@ben79

yes abucodonosor is my github name :slight_smile:

14

In windows 10, manufacturer set the RAID option and the driver C: is in fact a combination of the SSD + Intel Optane. In Windows, C: is a ntfs partition. In Linux (OMLX 3.03 live), if I set RAID on, C: corresponds to /dev/sdb with 4 partions, all of type unknown and no optane is listed, and if I set AHCI, /dev/sdb is /dev/sdb1(ntfs 500MB), sdb2 (fat32 100MB), sdb3 (unknown 16MB), and sdb4 (ntfs 446 GB).

Thus, I guess that, at least on Windows, optane is supported with a RAID configuration.

15

Forgot to mention that in Linux, AHCI makes optane to be listed as another independent device.

16

In any case, I still look for proper or better partitioning scheme to install OM LX 3.03 or OM LX 4.0, the latter if it is already ready to allow me to work…

17

Again system acceleration of ANY sort is NOT supported by INTEL on Linux

So Windows10 64BIT is the ONLY OS Intel supports Optane as ‘system accelerator’ …

18

Ok. The point is that it seems not to be true that, at least on Windows, system acceleration with optane is incompatible with the RAID option …

Whether in the future this acceleration is going to be supported on linux is something I had to be concerned now to avoid having to reinstall the Linux in the future because of a bad choice (AHCI or RAID) today.

Also, does RAID or AHCI have any consequence in this reference Tuning the performance of Intel Optane SSDs on Linux Operating Systems - IT Peer Network ?

19

Use whatever will allow Linux to see that as storage rest does not matter since
you only use it in Linux as ‘storage’.

In Windows so far I can tell , the driver is set as sort cache too , however with
help from the chipset and the drivers they got. Then you can add/remove/change with the util
howto use it.

The same setup ( ofc without the chiset support etc ) you can do for Linux.

Say you got Optane and 2 drivers …
now you can set the drivers raid1 use the raid1 array as LVM2 and set the
Optane one as cache for LVM …

To be honest with you a cheap SSD will do the same … In other words Optane is kind useless on
Linux right now.

20

Fortunately, manufacturer offer this optane as a gift …

I’ll do my best to understand and follow advices in this

thanks a lot