Re: Driver for RedHat Linux 8.0

On Sat, Oct 26, 2002 at 01:29:41PM -0200, paulor wrote:
> Promise ultra100 tx2 driver for RedHat 8.0. Do you known?

modprobe pdcraid

Re: How to get source code of RAID ?

The drivers are in the Kernel Sources. You can download from your local mirror:

http://www.kernel.org/mirrors/countries/html/CN.html

>Hi , How to get source code of raid ?
>
>
>Thanks a lot 
>
>
>Leon zhang
>
>VIA Technologies (China) Inc., Ltd.
>6/F DASCOM Tower, No.9 Shangdi East Road
>Haidian District, Beijing, 100085
>
>Tel: 86-10-62963088 ext 3919
>Fax: 86-10-62972929
>E-mail: leonzhang <at> viatech.com.cn
>Http://www.viatech.com.cn 
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Ataraid-list mailing list

Re: Promise raid controller moves ide0 and ide1

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002 11:47:01 +0200 Frank Steiner
<fst <at> informatik.uni-kiel.de> wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  I have an Asus A7V266-E with an onboard Promise raid controller.
>  We are booting diskless with tftp. My problem is, that Linux
>  detects the promise controller before the normal IDE controller,
>  so that IDE0 and IDE1 are taken by the promise controller, and
>  the normal IDE controller gets IDE2 and IDE3.
>  This is very bad because the diskless clients share config files
>  and are expected to have their local harddisk at ide0.
>  
>  Of course I could just plug the hard disk into the promise
>  controller or compile a kernel without support for the promise
>  controller.
>  But I'm curious if there is a way to force linux to give ide0 and ide1
>  to the normal IDE controller?
>  Disabling the "load ata raid bios" in the bios didn't help.
>  
>  Does anyone know a way to put the normal IDE controller before
>  the raid controller?

>From the kernel help:
	Boot off-board chipsets first support
	CONFIG_BLK_DEV_OFFBOARD
  	Normally, IDE controllers built into the motherboard (on-board
  	controllers) are assigned to ide0 and ide1 while those on add-in
PCI
  	cards (off-board controllers) are relegated to ide2 and ide3.
  	Answering Y here will allow you to reverse the situation, with

Does ATARAID resync an array if there's a power failure?

Re: Does ATARAID resync an array if there's a power failure?

On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, Dave Stubbs wrote:

> When I powered back on, the Linux Software Raid begain resyncing the md
> device.  I saw no evidence that the ataraid software even looked at the
> array to make sure it was ok.
>
> Hence my question:  does ataraid resync?  Does it even know if there's a problem?

AFAIK it does not.

You can boot without ataraid, use one of the disks alone, changing its
contents and reboot with ataraid and it doesnt notice that the thing is
out of sync. And my system didnt even do anything after a full crash.

If you know such things did happen, you should resync the disks manually..

Another solution i mentioned earlier in this list would be some kind of
"safe read" feature: if the system reads data from a raid1 array it should
read the data from both disks and compare it, so being able to detect any
sync problem

But the master solution for now would be not to use ataraid at all,
and instead use linux software raid
If you do, you will have more swapspace 

Viele Grüsse,
Thorsten

--

-- 
Thorsten Jungblut
Universität Koblenz, Fachbereich Informatik
 http://www.netcorner.org/

Re: Does ATARAID resync an array if there's a power failure?

That raises a few issues...

So what it needs is a feature where if a shutdown is dirty or a drive fails,
it syncs? How do we know which drive is good to sync to/from? Can the md code
be reused for this? Should we even bother? AFAICS the only benefit of ataraid
over md is bootability (and compatibility with promise et al), but is that worth
the work - maybe a dual disk grub + bios drive fallback is a better idea?

And when ataraid kicks in with inconsistent disks, which data is it really using?
If it's not checking/syncing ever (unless done manually), how redundant is it
really - it's only taken on trust that the data is good.

The previous reports of problems when a drive actually fails aren't very comforting
either... I think I'm going back to md raid...

>On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, Dave Stubbs wrote:
>>
>> Hence my question:  does ataraid resync?  Does it even know if there's a
problem?
>
>AFAIK it does not.
>
>You can boot without ataraid, use one of the disks alone, changing its
>contents and reboot with ataraid and it doesnt notice that the thing is
>out of sync. And my system didnt even do anything after a full crash.
>
>If you know such things did happen, you should resync the disks manually..

>
>Another solution i mentioned earlier in this list would be some kind of
>"safe read" feature: if the system reads data from a raid1 array it should

>read the data from both disks and compare it, so being able to detect any
>sync problem
>
>But the master solution for now would be not to use ataraid at all,
>and instead use linux software raid
>If you do, you will have more swapspace 
>
>Viele Grüsse,
>Thorsten

Re: Does ATARAID resync an array if there's a power failure?

On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Richard Barrington wrote:

> That raises a few issues...
>
> So what it needs is a feature where if a shutdown is dirty or a drive fails,
> it syncs? How do we know which drive is good to sync to/from?

md takes one drive (usually the first one) as the one to take the data
from, if the array comes out of sync

> Can the md code
> be reused for this? Should we even bother? AFAICS the only benefit of ataraid
> over md is bootability (and compatibility with promise et al), but is that worth
> the work - maybe a dual disk grub + bios drive fallback is a better idea?
>
> And when ataraid kicks in with inconsistent disks, which data is it really using?

This depends, but probably the data is mixed from both disks..
It may even happen that two read operations on the same bytes of such
an array deliver different data and that would be a very bad thing...
Think of an array consisting of two disks and on one of them there is an
error in the filesystem.. fsck could mean everything is good, but in the
truth...

> If it's not checking/syncing ever (unless done manually), how redundant is it
> really - it's only taken on trust that the data is good.
>
> The previous reports of problems when a drive actually fails aren't very comforting
> either... I think I'm going back to md raid...

my opinion, md is very much better.. Able to do raid5, resyncs on
errors, and the swap is not mirrored so that you can have twice as much if
using both disks (or it needs only half the space)

Viele Grüsse,
Thorsten

--

-- 
Thorsten Jungblut
Universität Koblenz, Fachbereich Informatik
 http://www.netcorner.org/

Re: Does ATARAID resync an array if there's a power failure?

On Thu, 7 Nov 2002 08:59:55 +0100 (CET) Thorsten Jungblut
<tjungblu <at> uni-koblenz.de> wrote:
>  On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, Dave Stubbs wrote:
>  
>  > When I powered back on, the Linux Software Raid begain resyncing the
>  > md device.  I saw no evidence that the ataraid software even looked at
>  > the array to make sure it was ok.
>  >
>  > Hence my question:  does ataraid resync?  Does it even know if there's
>  > a problem?
>  
>  AFAIK it does not.
>  
>  You can boot without ataraid, use one of the disks alone, changing its
>  contents and reboot with ataraid and it doesnt notice that the thing is
>  out of sync. And my system didnt even do anything after a full crash.
>  
>  If you know such things did happen, you should resync the disks
>  manually..
>  
>  Another solution i mentioned earlier in this list would be some kind of
>  "safe read" feature: if the system reads data from a raid1 array it
>  should read the data from both disks and compare it, so being able to
>  detect any sync problem

You can also use the BIOS of the promise card to "duplicate the image".
Have you ever tried that?

>  But the master solution for now would be not to use ataraid at all,
>  and instead use linux software raid
>  If you do, you will have more swapspace 
>  
>  Viele Grόsse,
>  Thorsten
>  
>  -- 
>  Thorsten Jungblut
>  Universitδt Koblenz, Fachbereich Informatik
>   http://www.netcorner.org/

Pavlos

--

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I love having the feeling of being in control
while i have the sensation of speed

The surfer of life
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Re: Does ATARAID resync an array if there's a power failure?

On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Pavlos Parissis wrote:

> >  Another solution i mentioned earlier in this list would be some kind of
> >  "safe read" feature: if the system reads data from a raid1 array it
> >  should read the data from both disks and compare it, so being able to
> >  detect any sync problem
>
> You can also use the BIOS of the promise card to "duplicate the image".
> Have you ever tried that?

I know, but this is the "manual" solution. it would be better if this was
done automagically by the ataraid-driver.. But in order to do this, it
would have to be able to detect out of syncs...

Viele Grüsse,
Thorsten

--

-- 
Thorsten Jungblut
Universität Koblenz, Fachbereich Informatik
 http://www.netcorner.org/

Re: Does ATARAID resync an array if there's a power failure?

On Thu, 7 Nov 2002 21:49:54 +0100 (CET) Thorsten Jungblut
<tjungblu <at> uni-koblenz.de> wrote:

>  > You can also use the BIOS of the promise card to "duplicate the
>  > image". Have you ever tried that?
>  
>  I know, but this is the "manual" solution. it would be better if this
>  was done automagically by the ataraid-driver.. But in order to do this,
>  it would have to be able to detect out of syncs...

I don't think that the driver which promise gives can do that,i have never
tried.
Do you know other raid cards which can to that?

And sometimes i prefer to manual this kide of task,because i can not trust
the driver for that and it's all about DATA!!!

Palvos

--

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I love having the feeling of being in control
while i have the sensation of speed

The surfer of life
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~