Highpoint 840A RocketRAID NOT detected [WORKAROUND]

[mael]

Hello,

My freshly bought Highpoint 840A RocketRAID Controller and its 8 connected "Samsung 860 EVO" ssd harddrives are NOT detected by the "SCSI_HPTIOP" kernel low-level scsi driver module, but it seems to be the smaller brother of the already from kernel supported 3740A RocketRAID controller by Highpoint.
The only differnence seems to be that the 840A supports only 6Gb/s per channel.
Thats is also confirmed by the top down view onto the expansion card.
In the upper right corner you can see the described dual product markings "RocketRAID 3740A/840A", so the layout and most likely also the raid processor of the controller has been used at least twice by Highpoint.
It also seems that the 840A is a 1:1 clone of the 2840A RocketRAID controller, because on some internetstores the 840A is actually sold as the 2840A.
My controllers firmware is the recent 1.0.0 version.
I couldnt find any other driver module that is matching my controller more closely.
The current published linux drivers by Highpoint are useless under (Gentoo) Linux.
The controller and its connected drives are working flawlessy under Windows 10, so its not damaged.
My motherboard is a "Gigabyte X99-SLI" motherboard with recent F24a bios version.
I am also willingly able to provide regular dump logs to kernel developers for driver debugging.

I would be VERY thankful for including support into the next kernel for this cool piece of hardware! UPDATE: ITS JUNK, DONT BUY IT! PLEASE READ MY LAST 3 POSTS!


Top-down view onto the expansion card:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images1000x1000/highpoint_rocketraid_3740a_12gb_s_pcie_1269779.jpg


dmesg outputs only this, then nothing else related to my controller:

[NeddySeagoon]

mael,

Welcome to Gentoo.

What does

[mael]

thank you for your quick advice,

actualy i am already a veteran user of gentoo but this is the first problem i couldnt resolv by net research
keep up the goog support work

lspci -knn outputs this:

[blopsalot]

u forgot to look at manufacturer website
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/BIOS_Driver/RR3740A_840A/Linux/RR3740A_840A_Linux_Src_v1.14.0_16_11_11.tar.gz
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/PDF/News_Review/Linux_Driver_Auto_Compile_Feature.pdf

[mael]

[blopsalot]

yeah i'd use the kernel raid as opposed to some nvidia type drivers for a RAID card

[mael]

device drivers should be as always ias soon as possible integrated into the kernel. experimental stuff can be included in the staging area of the sources...

at least i am happy that highpoint has "open source" drivers that can be in some way reverse engineered and adapted into it! we dont need another nvidia like behavior

[mael]

Has anybody an idea if this problem is beeing worked on?

[krinn]

well, you've made the bug report to kernel.org, and we're not highpoint software company, so what did you expect?
but, if you are feeling dangerous, and your assertion that the 840A is a 1:1 clone of the 2840A is true, then you might just hack yourself the driver, because generally there's no huge mechanism to detect a card other than just checking its pci vendorid:deviceid ; so if its the case and assuming the card won't burn and assuming indeed they are just clone, you can alter the 2840A pci info in the driver to the one use by your 840A and if it work, jump like mad, yelling that you did it!

[mael]

highpoint has ABSOLUTLY no interest to integrate in-kernel drivers for the rocketraid 800er series.

also the raid controller CANNOT boot from RAID 6, RAID 5 yes but no bootable RAID 6 arrays were supported! best of it it wasnt pointed out in their advertising, that only RAID 6 as a non-bootable data array is supported because of a small f*****g firmware bug which they dont wanna fix, but only delivering much lies AND excuses... i smell big fraud here! anyone interested taking part in a US-based class action lawsuit? feel free to contact me via private messages

i almost locked myself out after converting via the web management gui the raid 5 array to raid 6, the controller didnt recognize the system partition anymore, therefore my system went almost unuseable... but thanks to a emergency backup gentoo on a classic spinning drive i survived it even the gui didnt warn me, that raid 6 is not bootable on their controllers! yes, not even on more expensive 2000/3000 series rocketraid cards, according to a support engineer

i had a very interesting (NEGATIVE) conversation logged with an (support)engineer and would WITH CLEAN CONSIENCE NOT recommend to buy any products from them... they are like nvidia, to recite mr. torvalds: "they just want to sell chips..."

now i am looking for a new raid 6 bootable hardware raid controller... pricing doesnt matter, only the following...

- BOOTABLE RAID 6 ARRAY SUPPORT
- PCIEe 3.0+ card
- 16 sata drive support via 4 internal SFF-8643 mini-SAS HD connectors
- NOT FROM HIGHPOINT TECHNOLOGIES
- already (mature) full in-kernel driver support
- completly managability over a clean and structured firmware interface
- some kind of a opensource cli or (qt-based) gui managenent tool would be nice but is NOT mandatorial

my simple plan is just swap the pcie card, reconfigure and reinstalling my kernel for the new raid controller, moving the backup partitions on the new raid 6 array, reconfiguring grub, rebooting and FINALLY enjoying gentoo powered by raid!

has anybody a recommendation what controller matches that criteria or anybody here using a 16 disk raid 6 under gentoo? still smoking of anger about highpoint here... taking a cold shower now!
_________________
Gigabyte X99-SLI
Intel Core i7-5960X 16 Threads @ 3 Ghz
64 GB DDR4 RAM @ 2,13 Ghz
AMD Radeon 290X 8 GB RAM
Creative Soundblaster Z
Areca ARC-1883ix-16
16 Samsung 860 EVO 250 GB SSDs @ 3,5 TB RAID 6
Hauppauge HVR-5525
Firmwares are up-to-date

[mael]

thanks again all for the massive help here, but for me the case is closed!

i ordered already the:

Areca ARC-1883ix-16 PCIe Hardware Raid Controller

https://www.areca.com.tw/products/1883.htm

Product Picture:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/91lJ6t1gicL._SL1500_.jpg

as a worthy replacement, the only drawback seems he is nearly 2,5 times as expensive than its highpoint counterpart

needed in-kernel driver module:

[mael]

so, i wanna give a final status update and want to mark this thread as [WORKAROUND]

my new Areca raid controller works like a charm (DAMM FAST SYSTEM NOW!!! i STRONGLY recommend also to use a ram disk for compiling) and i just switched completly to gentoo linux ... finally the crapware filled windows 10 free YEAH!!!

and the moral of the story is ... stay away from highpoint take areca if you need reliable, ultra-fast throughput and ultra-low access times in data storage solutions (especially in a linux based environment )...

i admit they are more expensive BUT they are worth it every penny ... PERFECT HARDWARE, PERFECT FIRMWARE, PERFECT IN-KERNEL OPEN SOURCE DRIVERS, PERFECT SUPPORT, I REALLY THINK THEY DONT KNOW THE TERM "DISCONTINUED PRODUCTS"... unlike highpoint

THUMBS UP ARECA you are now my first choice when buying raid controller stuff

ah yes i almost forgot: ... a final word to highpoint ... i have completly logged the support ticket discussion on one page and still have plans to publish it so every interested one can take a look on your "buisness methods", because your company has the worst (product) support i ever encountered in my engineers life and other customers should be protected from you! DONT EVEN TRY TO SUE ME OR YOU WILL WAKE THE SLEEPING DRAGON ... we in germany are proud to have a constitutional law thats called "meinungsfreiheit" (translation: freedom of speech) which is backed-up by proveable facts...
_________________
Gigabyte X99-SLI
Intel Core i7-5960X 16 Threads @ 3 Ghz
64 GB DDR4 RAM @ 2,13 Ghz
AMD Radeon 290X 8 GB RAM
Creative Soundblaster Z
Areca ARC-1883ix-16
16 Samsung 860 EVO 250 GB SSDs @ 3,5 TB RAID 6
Hauppauge HVR-5525
Firmwares are up-to-date