I'm trying to install Debian Sarge 3.1 on an Intel DQ965GF mobo. This runs the Q965 chipset and ICH8R for SATA etc. I have two 320Gb SATA hard drives, configured as a single RAID1 volume using the hardware RAID driver. SATA, therefore, is set to "RAID" (which the documentation says means RAID support is on (duh!) and AHCI support is on). I have a bog-standard IDE CD-ROM drive connected to the PATA socket on the motherboard and set by the jumper to "master".

When I try to install, I boot "linux26 pci=off" (otherwise it hangs at the PCI detection!) and it gets as far as "Detect and Mount CD-ROM" before telling me that "No common CD-ROM drive was detected", and that my CD-ROM drive is "non-IDE, non-SCSI".

I have tried Debian's suggested approach of booting in "expert" mode and removing all but the ide-generic, ide-cd and ide-isofs drivers before trying to detect and mount the CD-ROM, but this makes no difference.

I have tried a couple of other CD-ROM drives, but the effect is the same.

I have tried setting the SATA explicitly to "AHCI", but that made no difference either.

I have researched the matter, finding some web sites that say that the ICH8R is not supported; others saying that because ICH8R is AHCI the 2.6 kernel support is excellent. Some sites say that the Intel Matrix Storage drivers are not available for Linux so there is no RAID support; others say that the hardware RAID is quite sufficient. In any case, I tried turning RAID off, and just installing with SATA set to AHCI, and with SATA set to IDE, but it made no difference. It still boots nicely off the CD-ROM drive and then tells me that "No common CD-ROM drive was detected".

So, anyone here care to help me with this tangle? All I want is Debian running nicely on a RAID 1 array. Not impossible, surely?