HOWTO: HPT372 Raid0 - 2.4.25

Message

cheesemonkeys · Post by **cheesemonkeys** » Fri May 21, 2004 7:56 am

Let me throw you a short intro to everything.

Before 5 days ago, I knew nothing about linux, much less gentoo. But on that day, rather than doing my periodical reformatting of WinXP, I decided to install gentoo. Boy did I dig myself deep. I was swamped with "complex" guides and articles. So in effort to help out the fellow newbs, I will try to explain how I got my Raid0 (hpt372) working in lay man's terms.

The Facts:

-My previous WinXP setup included two 200gig Wd's hooked up via my onboard HPT372 Raid into a Raid 0 config on my Soyo P4I-Fire Dragon motherboard to be used as data storage (not my boot drive). I thought once I got gentoo installed, I could just access this like windows. Obviously it doesn't.
-Installed gentoo 2.4.25-f1 with Live Cd and using gentoo-sources. (I did use 'doataraid' but it did not do anything for the livecd boot). Running KDE.

The Process:

First off I searched the forums to install my HPT, as I was and still am clueless to linux. I lot of people said RAID doesn't work on gentoo-sources, but I got it working. I will proceed to 'explain' how to install it in such a way as I wish I had found from the other guides: EXTREME easiness with complete examples.

Enabling HPT support in kernel.

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#cd /usr/src/linux
#make menuconfig
(blue screen of death, i mean kernel config should load)

Proceed to 'ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support'
Followed by 'IDE. ATA and ATAPI Block devices'
Scroll down until you highlight "HPT36X/37X chipset support"
Enable it by pressing the 'y' button; an asterik should appear next to it.

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ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support --->
   IDE, ATA and ATAPI Block devices --->
      [*] HPT36X/37X chipset support

Save and Exit the kernel config.

Compile the kernel, and make sure you mount your boot! (took me awhile to figure out what that meant) when you copy it over to it. You gotta reboot too.

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#mount /dev/hda1 /boot                     (do note that '/dev/hda1' should be whatever disk & partition you have as boot)
#make dep && make bzImage modules modules_install
#cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/kernel-2.4.25-gentoo-r1
#cp System.map /boot/System.map-2.4.25-gentoo-r1
#reboot

Now that we're back and booted, we now need to download the drivers/source for the HPT. I found them on http://www.highpoint-tech.com/372drivers_down.htm . Scroll to the very bottom to find "Linux open source release for HPT372". Download the corresponding file for v1.31, titled "hpt3xx-opensource-v131.tgz".
Save it somewhere, and extract it. In KDE I can just right click on it and 'extract here'. Run the make file.

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#(somehow extract the tar, Im too newb to know how to do it from prompt)
#cd /where/did/you/save/thefile
#make

The 'make' command should create some files, the most important being 'hpt37x2.o'.

Run insmod on that important file. I have no f'in clue what insmod does...

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#insmod hpt37x2.o

Goody goody. That linked my HPT to '/dev/sda'. Now to access that. It took me forever how to access a damn hard drive.

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#mkdir /home/HPTDRIVE             (make a folder, anywhere)
#mount /dev/sda1 /home/HPTDRIVE         (note the '1' after 'sda1', you need that, it represents the partition index)

anddddd whammo, HPT is working. /home/HPTDRIVE functions like a drive letter in windows, like a D:/. Linux - 0, Newbies - 1.
Now getting it to load at boot is a totally whole other issue that me, the linux novice, will have to learn from your expert complex guides. ;]

Oh and one small note, non relevant to your HPT endeavours: turns out linux doesn't like NTFS, the files system of my Raid. Thanks for telling me that AFTER i installed linux. Now Im trying to figure out 'captive ntfs', which is proving quite bothersome, or just replacing my linux drive with a spare drive and install winxp JUST to run Partition Magic and convert my RAID from NTFS to FAT32. Why is this so bothersome?

I hope i helped some newbs trying to untangle this complex hoola.

-Bryan[/code]

dinkme · Post by **dinkme** » Fri May 21, 2004 8:26 am

you only been using linux for 5 days bs, you gotta have more background on *nix systems than you act like you have

Scotty49 · Post by **Scotty49** » Fri May 21, 2004 9:33 am

Great work! Achieving the same with kernel 2.6.x was my personal dream (but it seems impossible up to the moment).

Greetz,

Scotty

cheesemonkeys · Post by **cheesemonkeys** » Fri May 21, 2004 10:13 am

dinkme wrote:you only been using linux for 5 days bs, you gotta have more background on *nix systems than you act like you have

lol, are you joking...bs? If i could figure out how to get my digicam to work with linux, i'd take a picture of the 50+ pages i printed, including portions of gentoo's handbook. I printed them out, then when thru and read EVERY word, marked in red the key areas, and made sure i somewhat understood what was happending. I have never heard of ext fs nor understood what the hell grub was nor why the hell i was compiling stuff for HOURS ~VERSUS~ selecting an install directory, hitting next, and being done in 45 minutes. I never touched anything *nix before this, and i don't know why i'm even rebutting online... hehe

Scotty49 wrote:Great work! Achieving the same with kernel 2.6.x was my personal dream (but it seems impossible up to the moment).

Greetz,

Scotty

I read that 2.6 doesn't have the native support in the Kernel Config, but did you just go ahead and try compiling and running the hpt drivers? What happens?

tomk · Post by **tomk** » Fri May 21, 2004 11:43 am

Moved from Installing Gentoo.

Scotty49 · Post by **Scotty49** » Fri May 21, 2004 1:29 pm

I read that 2.6 doesn't have the native support in the Kernel Config, but did you just go ahead and try compiling and running the hpt drivers? What happens?

I did. I'm not absolutely sure, but I think, I wouldn't compile the drivers. If it did, the kernel rejected the modules generated. Anyway, the box with the HPT RAID isn't my main Gentoo box, so I don't bother that much...

o0the_llama0o · Post by **o0the_llama0o** » Tue May 25, 2004 6:18 pm

cheesemonkeys said compile hpt3xx support in kernel, highpoint readme says don't enable it, i compiled it as a module so that i could turn it on or off but for some reason before i could test it...=>

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i did make KERNLDIR=/usr/src/linux-2.6.5-gentoo-r1

to make the drivers and it fails, i haven't been able to log the error please help

cheesemonkeys · Post by **cheesemonkeys** » Wed May 26, 2004 12:54 am

2.6 = no can do

btw i've reverted back to the masterpiece, windows xp

o0the_llama0o · Post by **o0the_llama0o** » Wed May 26, 2004 1:12 am

hope you didn't pay for it

cheesemonkeys · Post by **cheesemonkeys** » Wed May 26, 2004 10:52 pm

Actually I did...

$5 from university store.

MrPaulAR · Post by **MrPaulAR** » Thu May 27, 2004 2:15 am

I'm working on getting this working as well. Sure, this 3rd part driver works but why doesn't the hptraid driver that's built into the kernel work?

I'd much rather be using that one instead of this.

cheesemonkeys · Post by **cheesemonkeys** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:13 am

MrPaulAR wrote:I'm working on getting this working as well. Sure, this 3rd part driver works but why doesn't the hptraid driver that's built into the kernel work?

I'd much rather be using that one instead of this.

any reason why? or just because?

i woudl think that the hpt drivers on their sight are less 3rd party than the including kernel ones or whatever. but thats besides the point. i could not get the 'stock' ones working to any degree. my method works.

but im still loving my xp ;]