[dm-devel] Re: Follow-up on your AIC-79xx Linux Patch...
Darrick J. Wong
djwong at us.ibm.com
Mon May 15 19:25:56 UTC 2006
Actually, there are two ways that I know of to deal with this. I'm
assuming that you're using Adaptec HostRAID on that 7901 controller:
1) Deactivate HostRAID. Set up a small /boot at the beginning of sda,
make a md-based RAID0 out of the rest of the two drives for /, and
(generally speaking) things should just work.
2) md doesn't know how to interpret HostRAID arrays correctly--what you
want is a program called dmraid because it _does_ know how to interpret
HostRAID arrays and set up the device-mapper driver correctly. You'll
need to get the latest copy (1.0.0rc10) from Heinz Mauelshagen
(http://people.redhat.com/~heinzm/sw/dmraid/), build it, and then modify
your initrd to include /sbin/dmraid and call "dmraid -ay" prior to
mounting the root filesystem.
Neither approach requires the attach_HostRAID patch. Incidentally, the
a320raid driver is a binary module from Adaptec. You're not losing much
by using an open-source solution, because a320raid, md and dmraid are
all software RAID drivers.
--D
José Miguel Morales F. wrote:
> Hello Mr. Darrick. My name is José Miguel Morales, System Manager at
> Mining Center, P. Catholic University of Chile.
>
> I'm writing to you (in hope this IS your right address) about a
> thread you started on December 1st, 2005, at ussg.iu.edu
>
> Is about your "rejected" patch for "aic79xx_osm_pci.c" under kernel
> 2.6.14.
>
> I have a couple of Dell Precision 670n, with nice AIC-7901 on-board +
> 2 73 GiB. SCSI-3 10.000 RPM H.D.s, built as RAID-0 for QUITE A GOOD
> speed...
>
> Well, of course I had trouble installing Linux on that configuration.
> The driver ("aic79xx_osm_pci.c" of kernel 2.6.15, IDENTICAL to the
> 2.6.14 one) just recognized my two disks as /dev/sda & /dev/sdb, and NO
> RAID support.
>
> With your patch (and using "attach_HostRAID=1"), I finally made a
> /dev/md/0 visible, then wrote a SIMPLE /etc/raidtab (included below) and
> started it with "raid0run /dev/md/0".
>
> That way "fdisk /dev/md/0" was able to see the partitions, and WITH
> apropriate device names for each partition, but such devices don't exist
> under /dev/md/...
>
> Looking at /var/log/messages I found raidtools complaining about
> "errors with the superblock of the array", and I was unable to perform
> further actions without risking to destroy the array. (Which already has
> 2 partitions with a complete WinXP installation.)
>
> I noticed that you talk about an "a320raid" drier module, but I can't
> find any "direct" reference to it. Could it be possible to you to
> enlighten me a bit more on this issue, please?
>
> Sorry for bugging you, but as I read the whole thread I know I'll get
> no "official" help from Linux people, and I don't want to give up the
> array...
>
> Thank you very much in advance... José Miguel Morales F.
>
> P.D.: Here is my "simple" /etc/raidtab:
>
> - + - + - + - Cut Here - + - + - + - Cut Here - + - + - + -
>
> raiddev /dev/md/0
> raid-level 0
> nr-raid-disks 2
> persistent-superblock 0
> chunk-size 16
>
> device /dev/sda
> raid-disk 0
> device /dev/sdb
> raid-disk 1
>
> - + - + - + - Cut Here - + - + - + - Cut Here - + - + - + -
>
> ... I really don't know, but the "persistent-superblock" statement
> always gives me problems, no matter how do I use (or don't use) it...
> Regards !!!
>
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