Promise Raid, 400GB array won't boot

Dalcius · n00b Joined: 05 Dec 2002 Posts: 37 Location: Austin, TX

In short, I replaced my 120GB raid array with a 400GB raid array and my system will not boot. I'm using the same kernel binary, same grub configuration, etc.

In both configurations, the PDC driver loads and reports that it sees the two drives that make up the array. However, with the 400GB array, when the kernel attempts to mount the root partition, things blow up; the kernel complains about not being able to mount ataraid/d0p7, please append a valid root=. It appears as if ataraid isn't being populated.

In the first setup, the root partition was 40GB on reiserfs or ext3. In the second (the non-booting setup), the root partition is a ~100GB reiserfs partition. The kernel I'm using has reiserfs support built in.

Kernel: 2.4.20 (gaming sources)
RAID: Promise RAID Controller: FastTrak100 TX2 (2.00.0.24 firmware IIRC)

I have tried using the latest from mm-sources and gentoo-dev-sources, but in the end the result is the same.

Any suggestions or "Promise drivers are broken and can't handle over 130GB" comments would be very much appreciated, I am at a loss.
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-Dalcius

Mr_Burns · n00b Joined: 04 Jul 2004 Posts: 1

maybe a bios update of your tx2 helps (http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=8&category=bios&os=100)
it seems that old bios version has too less lba (i think only 32bit) support and therefore problems with bigger drives. the newer versions should support 48bit lba.

i had similar problems before i updated the bios, now i use 2 160gb drives (raid0), without any problems.
you should see the size of the disks of your array during the initialization of the controller at bootup (when you have the possibility to enter the fasttrak utility). if the right sizes of the disks are displayed, the bios is not the problem.

greets
Mr_Burns

GurliGebis · Retired Dev Joined: 08 Aug 2002 Posts: 509

try omitting the root= part of the kernel line in grub.conf
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Queen Rocks.

Dalcius · n00b Joined: 05 Dec 2002 Posts: 37 Location: Austin, TX

Updated my promise card's bios to 2.00.0.33, no luck.

Tried taking out root=, no luck.

Created a 20GB ext3 partition, copied all of my data over and attempted to use that as root=, no luck.

*whimper* :cry:

The only thing I can think of is to hit up whoever maintains this in the kernel or just go back to my old array. Any other suggestions are more than welcome.

Cheers
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-Dalcius