*** Announcement: dmraid 1.0.0-rc1 available at http://people.redhat.com:~heinzm/sw/dmraid

[Jack Howarth]

Heinz,
   I am confused about the exact purpose of the dmraid utility.
Reading the documentation it seems able to read metadata for
RAID partitions that use the closed source Promise raid driver
under Linux 2.4. Assuming that is the case, will dmraid allow
us to access these RAID partitions (where the Promise chipset
is set in RAID rather than ultra mode) under Linux 2.6? Also
will we be able use use such partitions as the boot and root
partitions for the system?
   I ask because currently I have been setting up machines
with two identical SATA drives attached to the Promise chipset
(running in Ultra mode rather than DMA mode) and using
software RAID-1 partitions created in DiskDruid/Anaconda under
the FC2 installer. While this is fine for Linux only machines,
it would be nice to have the option of using the Promise RAID
chipset in RAID mode for dual boot machine so that the Windows
partition could use the Promise RAID drivers. Currently I would
have to setup some sort of software RAID under Windows since
I have to turn the Promise RAID chipset to Ultra mode so that
I can use the promise-sata driver under Linux 2.6.
   Thanks in advance for any clarifications.
                         Jack