> > Zach: > > This is a question about your hardware setup...I can not answer about your > software question. > > I am also wanting to set a system using ultra66 for 2 raid1 drives. > > If you are following the Linux-raid mail list, you have probably seen that > some people are not to hot on ultra66 yet. Did you get it to work on at > least 4 drives? I am planning to put boot/system/swap on 1 drive on the > regular DMA33 bus and put the two RAID drives on 2 individual ultra66 > busses. I got it to work with two Maxtor 27GB drives (all I had at the time). Interesting experience... The worst part was trying to get a boot sequence that works. My root is an 8Gig Maxtor (all linux/swap). Lilo will not work no mattter if I set it while connected to on-board IDE or the Ultra33. Loadlin even failed to work with and without the Ultra33 in the system; it would freeze immediately after loading the kernel. I finally had to revert to booting from a floppy. Beyond this headache, every thing else was a relative breeze ( exception: I found that 2.3.11 has a bug with fat support, so I left this off in the kernel). Using and installing md4.1 (5.0 wouldn't compile for some reason I forget) was extremely easy. Here's where we get to the interesting part. With two drives my options were Linear, Raid0 and Raid1. I got Raid0 working without problems and tested it with hdparm. Results: 15MB/sec with DMA on 4MB/s with it off. Then I tried Linear across the drives. Results: 18MB/s with DMA 4MB/s with it off. Linear was faster than software raid! I experimented with several chuck sizes (4k 8k, 16k, 32k and 64k). Highest performance with hdparm (15MB/s) came at a 16k setting. This was on a Celeron 450 (overclocked 300A) with one drive per channel of the Ultra66. Best I can guess this means that either software raid tops out at around 15MB/s with today's CPUs, or that the fact that I was running through a single controller, w/ a single IRQ, limited my performance. I have another Ultra66 controller on order to see if striping the disks across it improves performance. > > What motherboard and/or controller are you using for ultra66? The Promise Ultra66 > > Does Suse Linux support the ultra66? I am trying Red Hat 6.0 standard > retail box. Are you having to custom program some drivers to get ultra66 to > work? (I am not a Linux programmer type...struggling with Samba and > RAID....) 2.3.8 didn't support the Promise Ultra66 (at least it didn't recognize it on boot). 2.3.11 did. I believe there is a Raid patch to a 2.2.X kernel that will also support the new card, but Suse 6.1's standard kernel (2.2.25) didn't have it. > > Hope you can get your setup going... A couple of earlier posts/emails directed me to the geyser of knowledge that is the Documentation directory under /usr/src/linux ( and served to hurt my pride in that the data I had been looking for for days was already in a file on my system :-/ ) Thanx to all that helped me. > > Skip Harrison > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Online Computer Supply > > -----Original Message----- > From: Zach Coombes, AMD Austin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Sunday, July 25, 1999 12:58 PM > Subject: How to add more ide device files? > > > >I'm running Suse 6.1 with 2.3.11, an Ultra66, and an Ultra33 (masochism > >runs in my family). I've noticed that the ide device files only go up to > >hdh, allowing only 4 controllers to be accessed at a time. This freezes > >out my motherboard/chipset controller. > > > >Is there an automated way to scan the installed hardware and extend this > >list? I know I can mknod till the cows come home (moo), but I haven't > >figured out how to get the major numbers for the additional controllers. > > > >Any dev-vy kind of people out there that can shed some light on this? > > > >Thanx, > > > >-Z > > > >------------------------------------------------ > >Zach Coombes _______ > >Sr. "Wants to grow up to be a EE" guy \____ | > >AMD, Austin _ | | > >email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / |_ | | > > |__/ \| > > > >------------------------------------------------ > >Zach Coombes _______ > >Sr. "Wants to grow up to be a EE" guy \____ | > >AMD, Austin _ | | > >email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] / |_ | | > > |__/ \| > > > >
