Fedora support for SCSI RAID Cards.

Ray Van Dolson rayvd at digitalpath.net
Tue Aug 24 21:29:00 UTC 2004


Thanks for the reply, Doc.  Actually, it appears the 2100S is the single channel
version of the 2000S -- the 2100 is also an Ultra160-based card.

So it sounds like I might have troubles with it... 

The alternate card I've been looking at is the LSI Logic MegaRAID Express 500.
I was pretty confident this card would work as I've used the old AMI MegaRAID
cards before... however, now I'm not so sure.  Is there a way to tell which
cards are supported by the current incarnation of Fedora?

Alternatives I am considering...

1) Just using Fedora Core 1
2) White Box Linux (http://whiteboxlinux.org/) (Essentiall RH Enterprise)
3) Somehow getting Fedora Core 2 to boot & install using a 2.4-based kernel.

I guess another option would be to do the OS install on an IDE drive and get the
RAID driver working later and simply use it to store user data.

A somewhat related question.. is the I2O driver the component that is required
to boot off these SCSI RAID cards?  As opposed to simply accessing them once the
entire OS is up and running...

Thanks again.

Oh, another question for you.  Are you using any sort of Backplane with your
RAID array for hot-swappability?  If so, just curious what you're using. :-)

On Tue, Aug 24, 2004 at 03:27:33PM -0500, dsavage at peaknet.net wrote:
> Ray,
>
> I'm using an Adaptec 2000S, the U160 version of your zero channel RAID
> (ZCR) card, on a Tyan S2468UGN dual Athlon motherboard. It converts my two
> on-board Symbios 53C1010-33 channels to any particular hardware RAID type
> I want. It's currently driving an 18G OS drive and nine 146.8G 10,000 RPM
> drives in a 1.1T RAID5 array. My U160 version is very fast right out of
> the box with no custom tuning.
>
> The problem is... The new SCSI framework in 2.6 kernels required a
> complete re-write of all SCSI drivers. Some, including the I2O drivers,
> didn't make it into FC2 or FC3t1. There's a work-around for some that
> works, but not for any of the ZCR cards.
>
> With FC1 being sundowned next month, and RH9 close to (if not at) EOL, I
> found myself in a situation where my only viable long term choice was
> RHEL3. Based on the older 2.4 kernel and SCSI architecture, its dpt_i2o
> driver works very well with ZCR cards.
>
> If you can hold your breath, FC3t2 could be released in about three weeks,
> and with any luck they'll have the new i2o_proc driver sorted out and
> ready for testing.
>
> --Doc Savage Fairview Heights, IL





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