FastTrak TX2 RAID0 controller (again)

blubber

Yes, I used the search...

. I've been searching google for almost 2 days now. I'm trying to get my Promise FastTrak TX2 to get to work with gentoo. I installed gentoo on the raid 0 array, no problems. Installed lilo, again no problem. It starts booting linux. But when linux is trying to probe my hde and hdf it gets timeouts. And after a while is says:
kernel panic: VFS Unable to mount root partition

Ive compiled all Promise ataraid options directly into the kernel, but it doesn't work. Can anybody help me?

tomte · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 08 May 2002 Posts: 122

partitions on a raid system aren't hdXY, are they?
IIRC they are called mdX or something.
If I'm right, you have to specifie the correct devices in your fstab.

regards,
tom

blubber · Posted: Sun Jun 02, 2002 2:25 pm Post subject:

paulisdead · Guru Joined: 10 Apr 2002 Posts: 510 Location: Seattle, WA

When I was playin around with a FastTrak, the partitions on the RAID0 array were recognized as /dev/ataraid/disc0/partX. The whole disc was represented as /dev/ataraid/disc0/disc. These FastTrak's really aren't very good though, my root partition kept getting trashed everytime I started trying to mess with WineX. Also performance gains weren't noticeable, I couldn't do a benchmark since hdparm doesn't work with IDE raid. Disk access seems to be faster with 1 drive with reiserfs (mounted with notail,noatime,nodiratime) and pre empt and low latency on.

rommel · Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2002 6:41 am Post subject:

hey blubber do you have the need to share this sytem with another OS...if you only have linux on this ypou might try to doa LSR configuration....just use your promise tx2 as 2 extra ide channels and setr a root and swap partition of equal size on each drive...then create extended partitions on each drive with the remaining space...then logical drives in each...this will become /dev/md0 of your linux raid 0 config if you wnat to try it....check out the articles section of gentoo ....drobbins has written a couple of shorts on it and links to some others that should help...the only thing that is not readily apparent is that when you set this up from the install of gentoo you must modprobe md to get it to see your fdisk and etc/raidtab info....this works very well and gives me around 80mb/s tranfer speeds

ph317 · n00b Joined: 02 Jun 2002 Posts: 43

Check the other thread I just responded to over here:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=4229

Especially point 5, which is probably the specific fix for you problem mounting the root filesystem.

blubber · Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2002 10:31 am Post subject:

mmm, while booting my computer says something about /dev/hdf not UDMA 100. It switches to UDMA 33, and then comes up with an error about using the wrong cable, I should use an 80 wire cable, but I am using one...

.

blubber · Posted: Sun Jun 09, 2002 1:15 pm Post subject:

This is the error:

hdf: set_drive_speed_status: status=0xff { Busy }
Warning: Primary channel requires an 80-pin cable for operation.
hdf reduced to Ultra33 mode.
hdf: set_drive_speed_status: status=0xff { Busy }
hdf: status timeout: status=0xff { Busy }
hdf: drive not ready for command

rojaro · l33t Joined: 06 May 2002 Posts: 732

i had exactly the same error ... putting the ide cable on the second port of the controller curiously solved the problem ... maybe this works for you too ...
_________________
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