Suse 9 kills my RAID array?

[Dee-ehn]

I have a MSI K7N2G-ILSr mainboard with an onboard Promise Fastrak 376 RAID controller. Through a BIOS flash I hacked this controller to a real Promise Fastrak TX2 plus controller.

So far so good. This works perfectly in Windows.

However, as soon as I load the Linux driver for this controller (official binary driver from Promise) the 4th disk on this controller (IDE 3 port, slave disk) is reported to be offline/malfunctioning by the BIOS of the RAID controller. By deleting the second array and redefining it, all works again.

Can anybody tell me what's going on here? This is quite akward and it doesn't yield me a find working system.

Furthermore, the Suse systems runs fine. All my hardware is recognized and working just fine, except for the controller...

[mdwatts]

Have you tried using the kernel drivers (ataraid & pdcraid) instead of the ones from Promise? I always do with my TX2.

You can search the JL forums for either 'pdcraid' or 'promise tx2' to find lots of previous threads on the subject.

[Dee-ehn]

When I do an insmod ataraid, I'm told the module is already being used. When doing an ismod on pdcraid I get an error that the module can't be loaded due to a problem, possibly with IO or a IRQ.

I don't really get it :confused:

[mdwatts]

Can you umount the filesystems on the TX2, rmmod the Promise drivers and then load pdcraid?

Also ensure PnP OS is disabled in the system bios.

[Dee-ehn]

Originally posted by mdwatts
Can you umount the filesystems on the TX2, rmmod the Promise drivers and then load pdcraid?

Also ensure PnP OS is disabled in the system bios.

I'm going to try that as soon as I get home. Just one question: SuSe 9 doesn't recognize this controller out of the box. As these pdcraid and ataraid come both with the standard kernel (be it as modules), I wonder if they recognize the promise card.

But ok, I'll give it a try...

[Dee-ehn]

Well I just tried it but could not do it, as my / is mounted on a drive attached to the controller.

My BIOS is setup correctly!

Any other ideas perhaps?

Thanx for the trouble!

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Dee-ehn
SuSe 9 doesn't recognize this controller out of the box. As these pdcraid and ataraid come both with the standard kernel (be it as modules), I wonder if they recognize the promise card.

Well I just tried it but could not do it, as my / is mounted on a drive attached to the controller.


My Promise FastTrak TX2 Raid Controller was detected during the installation of SuSE 9.0 and the ataraid & pdcraid modules were automatically loaded. My prod install of SuSE 9.0 is installed on the TX2 of which was available during the initial install.

I thought about you not being able to umount the device since it is currently in use.

Did you try installing without using the Promise drivers using ataraid/pdcraid instead?

For the original problem, have you had a look around the Promise support site to see if anyone else has run into the same problem?

http://www.murty.net/ataraid/ may help.

[Dee-ehn]

When installing without a driver disk, SuSe 9.0 simply tells me that no harddrives are found (it doesn't see the controller). Indeed, the TX2 is supported by SuSe 9.0, but the TX2 plus is not.

I contacted Promise about this problem and I've had some converstions with the guys over there, but they don't have a clue what's going on here.

I'm going to have a look at your site see if it's of any help.

Do you think that upgrading to kernel 2.6 might be of any help?

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Dee-ehn

Do you think that upgrading to kernel 2.6 might be of any help?

I don't believe the TX2 is supported by the 2.6 kernel. The pdcraid (and possibly the ataraid) support is not included. I've heard the ?? device mapper will be used instead though I'm not sure if it's working yet for the TX2 or other IDE Raid Controllers.

Hence the reason I have not upgraded to the 2.6 kernel on my prod SuSE install on the TX2. I did upgrade to the 2.6 on one of my test SuSE installs on the onboard HD (hda), but have not tested yet if it is possible to see or mount the partitions that reside on the TX2 HD's.

Have a look/search of the kernel mailing list archives.

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel

[Dee-ehn]

Hmmm there doesn't seem to be a (good) solution forehand.

Maybe I'll get me an additional RAID controller...