(how to) Install Promise SX4000 Raid Adapter

Ganto

hi

i know, that there are already some threads about this raid-adapter in this forum, but no success message with gentoo.

i'm working with gentoo/linux since 3 months and so it costs me a lot of effort to make this raid-adapter working, but now, everything is fine.

1. you can find some sources of the promise driver here:
http://majestic.lugh.de/~fs/promise/ and http://reussnet.mine.nu/board/thread.php?threadid=12&boardid=8

2. these drivers are non gpl so, they are going to taint your kernel when you load them. more info you can find here: http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5041108431.html

3. in the kernel you have to set this configs:

Loadable module support:
[*] Enable loadable module support
[ ] Set version information on all module symbols
[*] Kernel module loader

SCSI support:
<M> or <*> SCSI support
<M> or <*> SCSI disk support

4. compiling the drivers

Nox2k3 · Posted: Wed Feb 18, 2004 4:37 pm Post subject: 2.4.24 and SX4000

I have the SX4000 working alrightish on Gentoo with Vanilla 2.4.24 patched with ck, grsec, xfs, and serial ata. I used the promise opensource driver provided on their website and it seems to run fine.

Rad · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 12:44 am Post subject:

Same here, it's been more than one year since I bought that controller and it's been working fine with ANY version of the source based driver from promise I had (3 or 4 so far) and the 2.4 kernel series.

Now- I saw many of us would be interested in migrating their to Kernel version 2.6, and so am I. And this document: http://dev.gentoo.org/~brad_mssw/amd64-tech-notes.html states that the SX4000 works on amd64.

Has anybody actually confirmed this by him/herself?

I am very much in doubt this is true, considering how many users were interested and how you never heard of anybody reporting success, be it on either 32 or on 64 bit x86 processors. And of course I tried quite hard myself (32 bit CPU), without accomplishing anything...

Nox2k3 · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 2:23 am Post subject:

Thats very interesting... It would be nice to see *how* they are working, I cant imagine that the promise opensource driver would just up and compile on 2.6... I heard some strange rumor about it being supported nativly via the I2C bus? If that were true that would be fantastic however I have not had a chance to play with 2.6 on my server...can't afford the downtime and the possible loss of data. If anyone has this controller and can play with it, it would be nice to see what happens if you build 2.6 kernel with I2C... I don't remember exactly where I saw that information but if you google for sx4000 and 2.6 I believe its in there somewhere.

Edit
I believe that the tech notes speak of the SATA version of the SX4000, confusingly there are two controllers with the same name, there is an SATA and a PATA SX4000. I believe the SATA SX4000 works with the kernel SATA drivers, however theres no PATA version of the driver. Shouldn't it be rather trivial to at least hack in PATA support for something of the exact same chipset?

Also, has anyone had any problems moving large chunks of data to the controller? If I move a file thats roughly 7GB in size I get a deadlock. However several small files that amount to way over 7GB works fine. I don't move ginormous files often so its not really a problem but I would rather not have this bit of buggyness sitting around on my server.

Rad · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 12:17 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the information! I didn't notice they made a SATA - Version of their controller, too... now that explains it all!

And about the 7GB file problem you mentioned- well I once generated a few files bigger than 32GB on my array (JFS filesystem) and had no problems with it. I'm not so sure as to how similar the process is in comparison with copying a file there, though.

tmikul · n00b Joined: 20 Jul 2004 Posts: 2

Hi

I'm trying to make it work on my Gentoo (recent sync). I tried with both drivers on the majestic page given sooner here (the one from 16 June 2003 and the newer one from 28 Oct 2003). It seems to work with both but after unmounting and remounting, or after a reboot, files get corrupted (CRC errors on gzipped files)
I have SX4000 with 256 SDRAM (tested) with the latest bios available on promise website - 2.00.0.21
RAID 5 with 4 WD drives

What could be possibly be wrong?

Tom

Rad · Posted: Tue Jul 20, 2004 9:27 pm Post subject:

I remember some 2.x.x.x BIOS not working for me (the existing JFS / Reiser Partitions on the Array were rendered unusable while that version of the BIOS was installed), so I switched back to 1.02.0.5.

Also, I had minor -but annoying- problems with the newer versions of the drivers on lugh.de and file system integrity, but the older drivers fixed that problem, too.

So I think you should try downgrading and look whether it works! And if it still does not, you could try using just 64 or 128 MB of RAM. (I think in many cases it's even faster to have less RAM, for some reason...)

tmikul · n00b Joined: 20 Jul 2004 Posts: 2

Rad, thank you for your help, it was the memory. I tried with other 256 SDR memory and it works well. So, as for now, it seems to work even with the latest bios (2.00.0.21) , newer drivers and 256 MB of memory.

Tom

Badmaster · n00b Joined: 16 Nov 2004 Posts: 9

has ANYONE still got the compiled module for ANY kernel still available? (deleted my entire setup, thought I could just recompile it -,- )

can't get it to work with any of the kernels still available -,-

thanks in advance!