HELP: Promise SX4-M SATA RAID Card - Fedora 3 wont' Recognize Card?

[theg604]

Hi,

I have a new system which I need to setup as a file server runing SMB.

Since the hardware is relatively new I decided to go with Fedora 3. The Hardware is

Promise Fasttrack S150 SX4-M PCI RAID Card
4 x 200 GIG Segate SATA HDD

I'm running them in RAID 1 configuration
so basically
2 arrays of 200 GIG

When I try to use the driver disk from Promise site Fedora does not recognize it. When I use the sata_sx4 driver included with Fedora 3 ithe system doesn't disply the raid arrays but each drive. The SX4-M is a hardware raid right, or is it software?

Pls help.

What should I do?

Gary

[carlo.target]

Hi,
I've the same problems, I have only 3 disk with 200Gb, and I found the same problems, but with various version.
Using the help near the installation I've set down the raid software (not an easy thing) but during the installation I can't put the boot loder, nor Lilo neither grub!
I tried to install it with several live cd, but nothing to do..
There's someone can help us??

P.S. I'm Italian so sorry for my english

[v_lestat]

fedora doesnt recognise ANY sata raid infact there are only a few linux distro's out there that even support sata raid.

there is no way around this although i have seen a few people do it but its a HUGE pain in the ass.

i dont think it is hardware raid. i know its retail is $300 but that dont mean its hardware. i think its still software raid. in fact i think it is infact software.
Promise Hardware-Assisted RAID 5 Architecture its only hardware assisted which isnt full hardware so its only a slight amount of hardware, and i think the assisted part is only becuase it has the error correction built in. and it also has a small memory controller cuz of the stick of ram on it.
why are you trying to install drivers from promise when promise dont even have drivers that support FC 3 all they support is
Linux: Red Hat 8.0/9.0 and SuSE Linux

they have no support for FC 3 and the 2.6 kernel.

[chris.pavan]

I have been able to get the Promise card to work with FC3. Use the boot option linux noprobe the you will be prompted to add device. Scroll to the Promise SX4 card and it should show your drives. It takes a while for the drivers to load for some reason but they will. Just wait!

Now onto my problem. FC3 sees my 3x 300GB drives. The SX4-M card is set up for RAID5 2+1 giving me 600GB of usable storage. When I look at the drive with Disk Druid it shows three seperate disks instead of one large disk. Why is the OS looking past the RAID controller? What am I doing wrong? Help!
Chris

[chris.pavan]

OK so my brain is fried. I just read your post again and I realize that you are having the same problem I am. I am going to try to flash the BIOS on the Promise card. It has to be a problem with the card. The card should be reporting a single drive. If not then what is the point in having an addon controller? According to the Vampire it is not a true Raid controller. BUT when I boot with the ULTIMATE BOOT CD and run a benchmark test it sees the drives as 1 600GB disk. So, tell me what you think now! It has to be a flaw in the card BIOS. or...???

[Nord]

According to my knowledges, no sata-raid cards are true hardware raid. So you can see single drive only in the case of proprientary drivers, which blind you.
So I switch my Promize raid card in separates-drives-mode and use software raid.

You can verify the status of different sata-controllers here: http://linux.yyz.us/sata/

[v_lestat]

nord is correct even though hardware or software it dont really matter to Linux, no linux distro out there likes SATA RAID only a select few SATA RAID cards actually have Linux RAID support.

why?? who knows. SATA RAID has been out for what?? 3 years now ? sata raid is run from a rom chip so linux isnt reading the partition table correctly and isnt reading the raid card bios properly to see the raid set. why ??? who knows. contact your local linux freak and ask them. why dont we have sata raid support. the world is switching to SATA wtf is the problem.. how many more years we gunna have to wait. ?

[chris.pavan]

WTF is correct! I am still learning how to do things with Linux. I do think it is better than windows anyday. What is the hold up on these S-ATA raid controllers. I found another post on another Red Hat forum that said they have the Promise card running. They said they have another HDD running Linux and are using the card for pure storage. I have a support request in to Promise asking them WTF. They are advertising that it works. What a load of crap. I went S-ATA because of this card and cost of the drives. I know for the future to stay SCSI.

If I get any answers from these boneheads I will let you all know. Man this sucks!

[Veidit]

I have the same card and same problem.

Would 3Ware 8506-4LP http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata8000.asp work better since I heed hardware SATA raid support (I want to boot from a RAID5 device) with FC4?

[chris.pavan]

The 3Ware raid controller is an actual hardware raid. at least the ones I have seen. FC should see it as one large disk. set up RAID X in the raid bios and you should be able to format the array with any file system you want. good luck.

[Veidit]

The installation with software raid worked when no array was defined but now it won't boot since no array is defined, is there some way to get around that?

[chris.pavan]

I don't understand. You setup fedora with software raid, then defined an array on the controller???

Once you define the array you will need to reinstall fedora. Then when Fedora boots it will see the array as one disk. There is no real easy way to convert the software array to the hardware array.