Linux drivers for promise fasttrak100 onboard IDE raid please?

[Rick Stevens]

Daryn wrote:
> Hi there.
> 
> Old question, I gather but a good'un.
> 
> I'm trying to install some version of linux onto a generic 1u server with a
> Tyan Thunder LE-T motherboard with 1 hard drive on the "normal" IDE port, one
> on the IDE raid port. It's got a Promise Fasttrak100 soft-raid IDE controller
> onboard. When I've tried to install Redhat 9, (without using any drivers other
> then those that redhat itself contains) it see's the drive on the raid
> controller as hde. On using the drivers on a floppy disk from www.promise.com
> for redhat 7.2, following the instructions, it sees the drive correctly as
> sda. However, in both circumstances, the systems refuses to boot after
> installation has successfully been completed. After the bios checks have been
> completed, the system shows a flashing cursor on a blank screen and does
> nothing else. 
> 
> However, if a floppy boot disk is in the drive, it boots successfully. This
> implies to me that redhat cannot find the boot files. I am installing Grub to
> the MBR of hda. Can anyone shed any light on what I'm doing wrong please? 
> 
> (yes, I know redhat 9 is old and fedora is the way forward but I want to make
> sure that i've can install it at all without downloading the cd's for fedora yet)
> 
> Thanks for any help available. I've read of a bloke called jason tang who
> enjoys creating promise drivers for redhat installs but his website is missing
> at members.rogers.com/sith.warrior. 

The problem lies with how the BIOS numbers the drives.  The first hard
drive is given the BIOS ID of 0x80, the second as 0x81 and so on.  If
the BIOS says that the "normal" IDE is the first drive (0x80) (which is
what sounds like what's going on), then when you install grub, it'll
install to the "normal" IDE drive, since that's 0x80 and grub asks the
BIOS which drive is the "boot" drive.

When you use the floppy, THAT version of Linux remaps the drives so the
RAID is now 0x80 and the regular IDE is 0x81 or 0x82 or some other
thing.  The problem is, the BIOS still thinks 0x80 is the regular IDE
and grub still gets loaded there.  On top of that, when the initrd image
is saved, it won't include the RAID driver, since the root filesystem
isn't on a RAID disk (as far as the BIOS is concerned).

If you go into the BIOS of the machine and tell it that the RAID is the
first drive to look at, the BIOS should then number the RAID drive(s)
as 0x80 and both the floppy boot and the CD boot should work as
expected.

Fedora Core 2, 3, and 4 all include Promise RAID drivers and should be
able to sort this out without the help of the BIOS, but it wouldn't hurt
to bugger the BIOS settings anyway.  It's best to wear a condom and a
full hazmat suit, right?  :-)

Be aware that FC2, 3 and 4 are based on the 2.6 kernel.  FC1 is based on
the 2.4 kernel as is RH9.  In fact, FC1 was GOING to be RH10, before
they decided to go the commercial "Enterprise Linux" route).  RH
Enterprise Linux 4 (ES4, AS4, WS4, etc.) is based on Fedora Core 2.

Hope that helps out a bit.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-  Memory is the second thing to go, but I can't remember the first! -
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