EIO AP-1680 (PCI ATA133 RAID Controller) Problems

Dimebag · n00b Joined: 29 Jul 2002 Posts: 6

Hi there,

I installed gentoo yesterday, only took me half a day, but i got there! (damn kernel compiling thing

)

I have a problem and its getting me down, i'll get to the point.

When the raid card (the one listed in the subject) is plugged into the board the machine fails at a very early bootup stage. It recognises the card ok but when it queries the drives on it, there is a devide by 0 error and the system crashes. It has the error message that the kernel is panicing because something tried to kill and init (or something similar).

Taking the card out obviously makes it work fine, as I am booting off a drive on a motherboard resident controller.

I want to be able to use this card all the time as i have a dual boot windows setup that i mainly use on the system.

Can anyone recommend a port driver or something to download so I can integrate it into the kernel, recompile and solve this problem with the card?

On the manufacturer's site it lists that the card is fully linux compliant, I think all I need is some sort of driver for it as the generic one (i'm guessing it must be using a generic one) fails to work properly. Even though I have installed the os I am really a new user to this. I dont think i've done bad by getting this far so if I am missing something really easy / obvious please dont just post back having a go at me. Be as precise as you can even though it may be an easy fix, thanks :=)

Over all very impressed with gentoo though, nice installation, very little bugs. Any bugs i did come across was really my fault for trying to optimise the kernel perhaps a bit too early but there you. (It stands at a lovely 1.7 meg

, i dont know where the guide of 750 k comes from!).

Any help with this situation would be greatly received, thanks very much.

All the best to you all.

Dimebag

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Are you using a Gentoo sources kernel, or a vanilla kernel? Many times the Gentoo kernels conflict with hardware (ATA and RAID hardware included). Others have had problems with RAID too. If the kernel isn't your problem, you may try a forum search (if you haven't already).
_________________
Quis separabit? Quo animo?

BonezTheGoon · Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2002 3:15 pm Post subject:

After looking at the manufacturer site it seems to me that they are stating that the RAID for this card is a software RAID. It indicates that the RAID function is handled by the OS. They do not really provide much help at all, given no specifics of what the card is. What does the controller chip on the card say? What model/part number does it have on it? What brand is the chip?

My current working idea is that somehow your kernel is using the incorrect driver/module for this card. Perhaps if we can more precisely identify what the card is we can figure out what to enable in the kernel (and more importantly what to DISable). I did a search on Google and didn't find anything (today) that seems to be that helpful. So some more information (any that you can provide) on the specifics of the card should help in the search!

Regards,
BonezTheGoon

Dimebag · n00b Joined: 29 Jul 2002 Posts: 6

Hi there, me again.

I have some more information about the card as requested.

The main controller chip on it is made by Silicon Image.

The serials and codes on it is,

Silicon Image
Sil0680CL144
1G3718
0201

The bios on the card reads

SST MPF
39SF010
9C-4C0-AH
9922194-A

The card overall is a Revision 1.0

Hope this helps with finding out some more information, and maybe a solution. I'm not too sure where to look or what to do. Perhaps I'll search google for Silicon Image linux drivers or something. I'm too stupid to see if there is a driver port for it, I honestly wouldnt know where to look

( /usr/lib/kernel/*/drivers/scsi <--- something like this?)

Thanks for any more help you can provide!

Dimebag

Dimebag · n00b Joined: 29 Jul 2002 Posts: 6

Little update,

tried the card with a redhat 7.3 distro and it crashed in exactly the same place on bootup...

my gentoo release actually crashes with or without the damn card in now as well...

its ass fucked as they say.

/me goes back to the drawing board.

Dime

BonezTheGoon · Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2002 10:51 pm Post subject:

Well it seems this is the webpage for the Manufacturer of the Chipset (Silicon Image). It doesn't provide too much helpful information though. It does indeed verify that the RAID function is totally software driven though, which may be an interesting side note. So when you are compiling your kernel I would leave all RAID options DISABLED (unless you are actually trying to use the RAID function of the card, seems to me though that you are simply using it as another IDE controller.) I realize that you are going to be starting from scratch now given your unfortunate status, but this could end up for the better! At any rate searching Google now with the added information of the chipset does yeild more results, however I haven't found anything ground-breaking yet. I'll keep you posted. Hopefully some Linux Guru/Diety will happen across this thread and will enlighten us all (I can hope can't I?)--It could happen. Anyway, good luck! Be sure to post your results so that others will benefit from your hard work!!

Regards,
BonezTheGoon

BonezTheGoon · Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2002 10:54 pm Post subject:

Unfortunately according to this PDF file it would appear that the Chipset Vendor is either unaware of any Linux support or knows there is incomplete/insufficient Linux support. Of course this doesn't mean much, but it certainly doesn't look really promising. Again, still looking!

Regards,
BonezTheGoon

BonezTheGoon · Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2002 10:58 pm Post subject:

Now I find this link, which is only the posting of another users experience refering to another retail card (which apparently uses two different chipsets to drive the controller depending on the model number.) Refer to the users comment, just another clue maybe.

Regards,
BonezTheGoon

dn1282 · n00b Joined: 21 Jul 2002 Posts: 26 Location: California

Don't know if this helps but I got a Maxtor ATA 133 card for my 160gig drive...and it uses the promise chip i think. In the 'make menuconfig' i enabled all the raid controller options and also enabled the promise chipset support.

sorry if this post was useless

Dimebag · n00b Joined: 29 Jul 2002 Posts: 6

I did exactly what you said you did dn1282, it didnt seem to help.

I'm going to have to totally start again regardless as the kernel will not actually boot with or without the card in, I'm not sure what happened there, it compiled fine.

I think I will do what Bonez says about not enabling anything raid. I am not actually using it as a RAID controller as such, just an extra 133 ATA controller, the disks are linear single arrays, no mirroring/striping etc.

The problem is, I can compile the kernel as much as I would like, adding support, not adding support whatever, the machine will still crash on bootup the next time the card is put in if i cant provide some sort of specific driver for it. (I'm assuming there a bit yes, but it seems likely)

Right at the moment I can't use any distro of linux (I've tried 3 which probe the card and crash on a devide by 0 error when querying the disk), which is seriously pissing me off.

I might install gentoo again with raid features turned off etc etc, just to get the system working... but if as soon as i put the controller card in the machine it crashes 3 seconds into bootup im not going to be best pleased.

Dimebag