Hi Peeps! :)
I've been reading the threads and I just want to share my experience with SATA RAID Controllers (specifically the Promise 20378 based). I know a lot of you don't want to use the driver from Promise but just to let you know, the driver does work! ;) I've done two Promise controlled pc based server (The first using PATA and the 2nd using SATA) using RH8 and I hadn't had a problem ever after they where installed... properly that is... took 2 days to have made it work 100% for my first setup which has been running without restarts or downtime for almost 2 years already. The second setup, well just read on... :) Below where the pc based server setup that we did (2 of this actually): Pentium 4 2.4Ghz HT Asus board with an intel chipset (forgot the model number hehe) 1Gbps LAN (Built-in) Promise PATA/SATA RAID Controller (Built-in) 1GB PC400 SDRAM 2 x 80GB 7200RPM SATA Drives (RAID 1 configuration) RH8 (hehe old kernel but works using 2.4.18-14smp) THE FIRST DAY! The first time I installed it, I had problems because of the board configuration especially the 1Gbps lan and the Promise RAID wasn't supported by the kernel. Few searches on the net and found the drivers that I needed (I thought they where good). After going through the instructions for the RAID installation of promise, tried 3-4 times that day and keep getting errors on the installation. After the last attempt that night, kept swearing the whole night hehe THE SECOND DAY! More googling and forum checking. Seems its not just me having problems, a lot of users of the same board was having problems because the board was very new, linux distro's didn't recognized the lan and raid. Turned back to Promise website again for more information and support for linux driver version and found another driver. Attempted 2 installations and the 3rd time (F**K**G instructions wasn't 100% right), did my own installation instructions hehe and it worked. FINALLY!! Time for a burn-in test... Runned some services and a copy of one of our main application (which was so heavy on the database and the processor) on it for the overnight burn-in. THIRD DAY! Hmmm... everything seems working fine... told myself it looks good then did a shutdown that morning. Thinking it was ready for deployment, we scheduled a re-installation that afternoon for a final installation of our application. Then BONG!!!! After we turned it on, the RAID controller said it encountered an error on boot up. Panicked and did the restoration via promise interface. Seems ok again after that. Another burn-in test that night. FOURTH DAY! Ok, another restart that morning. We thought everythings fine, we were so busy that we didn't see the boot up message of the RAID, by the time we turned our attention to the server, RH8 was booting already. Ok so everything looks good now. Back to being busy that day. By mid-day, we tried a restart to see if its still ok. After an hour, we noticed that the HD lights was on almost 100% of the time, we haven't runned any application or services yet. We observed it for the next 20mins, so seems like somethings happening with the controller. A restart was in order. Then BONG!! Again, an error on the RAID configured disk. It seems it was doing an auto-restoration after linux has started because when we did the manual restoration it started past the 50% mark already. FIFTH DAY! Another day of googling and forums... another trip to the manufacturer's website... another driver download... another installation, and violla, it seemed the new driver that I downloaded was working this time. Just a quick note though, the (F**K**G) instructions again wasn't 100% accurate. NEXT 5 DAYS! Few restarts... 3 days straight burn-in... double checking if 100% working even with our application running.. EUREKA!!! No errors... FINALLY!! FINALLY!! The server is running 100% ok. Scheduled the 6th day for a final installation on the server and the 2nd server (very same configuration). For the past 9 months, we have not had any problems, downtime, error, what so ever on the two SATA - RAID controlled linux servers, even if we were just using a 2.4 kernel (raid drive mounted as scsi by linux). :) Oh, by the way, I didn't mention the 3-days thinkering for the 1Gpbs lan cards... that's another story. Well, that's my story. Actually, I forgot what exactly I changed in the installation to have made it work. We had so many attempts and we forgot to document it. We were only able to do the 2nd server setup with no problems because everythings still fresh on our mind that week hehe.. getting older I think.. memory getting bad.. hehe.. but hopefully we will still able to remember if did encounter it again.. Well, have a good day fellow pluggers.. time to sign off now... Regards, Rikki T. Vizcarra > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > linux.com] On Behalf Of Paolo Alexis D. Falcone > Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 7:12 PM > To: Philippine Linux Users Group Mailing List > Subject: Re: [plug] linux SATA (hardware) raid support > > On Friday 18 June 2004 3:05 pm, mdaly wrote: > > greetings! > > > > the company i work for will be purchasing several PC-based servers.. > > we're eyeing (either) mobo's with onboard SATA raid controllers or SATA > > raid controller cards (ICH5 or Promise 20378 based)..i've read on some > > forums that linux does not support hardware raid on these controllers..a > > work around would be to disable hardware raid on the controllers > > BIOS..linux will detect these HDs as "normal" IDE disks therefore > denying > > our purpose of using SATA HDs (faster transfer rates than parallel ide, > > cheaper than SCSI HDs, btw, these servers would not be "that" io > > intensive).. > > > > however, some forums say that kernel-2.6.* supports SATA raid > > controllers..could anybody confirm what kernel-2.6.* does support??is it > > SATA hardware raid??also any experience working with these disks in a > > production environment would be enlighting.. > > > > p.s. we will be installing slackware on these new machines.. > > There's another way of installing - bootstrap the install from another > machine. > > Once you've installed Slackware, try replacing the /dev/hd?? entries > in /etc/fstab to /dev/sd?? for them to be seen as SCSI devices. Upgrade to > the latest 2.4 or 2.6 kernel to enable SATA support. Note that you need to > compile SCSI and SATA support directly in the kernel for you to be able to > even boot it the next time you run that kernel. > > As for RAID support using the Promise controller 20378 - forget it. The > Promise 20378 RAID driver is partially software based - better stick with > Linux software RAID, or buy another RAID controller (the 3ware Escalade > SATA > RAID controller works afaik). > > There's incomplete support for the ICH5 chipset's SATA RAID in the current > state of Linux libata code. > > -- > Paolo Alexis Falcone > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- > Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) > Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph > Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph > . > To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug > . > Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to > http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
