Linux & hardware RAID...

Linoge · n00b Joined: 01 Aug 2004 Posts: 8 Location: Russia

Good day to all!
I have some problem with FastTrak 100TX2. 2HDD 80Gb in raid, Kernel 2.6.7, compiled wit options (without comments):
#Block devices
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_FD=y
CONFIG_LBD=y

# ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support
CONFIG_IDE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDISK=y
CONFIG_IDEDISK_MULTI_MODE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDECD=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDESCSI=y
CONFIG_IDE_TASKFILE_IO=y

#
# IDE chipset support/bugfixes
#
CONFIG_IDE_GENERIC=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_CMD640=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEPCI=y
CONFIG_IDEPCI_SHARE_IRQ=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_GENERIC=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_RZ1000=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_PCI=y
CONFIG_IDEDMA_PCI_AUTO=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PDC202XX_OLD=y
CONFIG_PDC202XX_BURST=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PDC202XX_NEW=y
CONFIG_PDC202XX_FORCE=y
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA=y
CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO=y

After booting i have 2 separate drive but not one raid. Any idea how can i
"enable" raid? Please help.
_________________
Everything's eventual!

adaptr · Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2004 1:27 pm Post subject:

The Fasttrak cards are still software raid - the only thing "hardware" about them is the fact that they support you doing software RAID...

IOW you'll need a kernel-level driver for it.
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>>> emerge (3 of 7) mcse/70-293 to /
Essential tools: gentoolkit eix profuse screen

Linoge · n00b Joined: 01 Aug 2004 Posts: 8 Location: Russia

Linoge · n00b Joined: 01 Aug 2004 Posts: 8 Location: Russia

Yet... System were compiled in chroot directory. After all compiling i had in chroot directory /dev/ataraid. Then "tar-gzip" (save all permissions and path etc.). When i replace old root partitions to my chroot directory and reboot i didn't have /dev/ataraid. Why? What happend?
How should i create soft-raid? Usind device-mapper or another way? What will be best?
Kernel were compiled with all "Multi-device support"
_________________
Everything's eventual!

Linoge · n00b Joined: 01 Aug 2004 Posts: 8 Location: Russia

Good day to all!
What is about my problem? What are raid-controllers can work with 2.6.7? Is it impossible to make work "hard-raid" with this controller in 2.6.7?
_________________
Everything's eventual!

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

In 2.4.x the driver that supported these types of cards was ataraid. Unfortunately, they have taken this out in 2.6.x and while the raid cards are supported, to get them to do the raid you have to use userland tools (look up dmraid) to get it working.

This is fine for everyone but those of us who have to boot off of our raid arrays -- we have to boot Linux to use dmraid in userspace, but until we use dmraid to mount our raid array, we can't get to our data -- chicken and the egg problem. Actually I lied, you can do some hacks to load dmraid before the kernel does its thing, but in my opinion the solution is quite silly. I'm going with 2.4.x for now.

If you can live with only Linux on your system, you might consider going all software raid. There are guides in the forums on how to accomplish that.

Cheers
_________________
-Dalcius