I've been working on getting a solid guide together for implementing a bootable Gentoo system on the FastTrak 376 (Promise PDC20376) software-based RAID/S-ATA controller. So far, I have been able to do a complete install flawlessly with the drivers at acceptable disk transfer speeds.
However, I have hit a bit of a snag. I'm able to boot to a live system with the kernel and modules copied from the LiveCD, and a homemade initrd for loading the ft3xx module. It runs at acceptable speeds and seems perfectly stable. However, with any other (home built) kernel, I've been getting extremely slow (PIO) speeds from the drives on the FastTrak controller. This renders the system unusable, obviously, as booting takes at least 5 minutes (for starting up minimal services). I've installed my own kernels and have used the genkernel script (using the /proc/config from the LiveCD's kernel) to try and get a working kernel homemade, but so far I've been unsuccessful. If anyone has any insight to offer, it would be greatly appreciated. Also, if anyone has done this before and can offer advice as to building the ft3xx (half-open source, it seems) module into the kernel proper, it would be even more appreciated, as that would eliminate the need for an initrd altogether. Thanks in advance for any help with this. - Bryan D. Stine
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