One major issue remains for most when it comes to installing Ubuntu on a dmraid “fake raid” enabled system. Most of us who fall into this category use this because we still run a partition with windows on it. With the new Gutsy Gibbon release, things are a bit easier, but one must still trick the system. Here is how we do it.

What you will need:

1. Gutsy Gibbon Live CD.
2. Internet connection that works out of the box.
3. A few minutes.

Load the Live CD:

Insert the Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon Live CD and boot up your machine. Once booted you need to install the dmraid package to gain access to your fake raid mapper.

Open a terminal and do the following:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install dmraid

Now you can run the installer. When you get to partition management, make sure you select manual. On the next screen you will see a drive named something like nvidia_egcccede. That is your fake raid array in raw form. You probably have a windows partition on there somewhere. Here is what my disk looks like:

nvidia_egcccede — Entire Drive. Do not touch.
nvidia_egcccede1 — /boot
nvidia_egcccede2 — /
nvidia_egcccede3 — /home
nvidia_egcccede4 — /windows

Thats all I will cover about partitioning a fake raid. Once you have the desired effect, click next.

Now you need to tell the installer not to install the bootloader. When you get to the last screen hit advanced and uncheck install bootloader. Hit next. The installer will now partition and install all the required packages to your new dmraid partitions. When it completes this is 15 minutes or so, you have to install the bootloader by hand.

Open a new terminal.
$ ls /target
bin cdrom etc initrd lib media opt root srv tmp var
boot dev home initrd.img lost+found mnt proc sbin sys usr vmlinuz
$ sudo dchroot /target