dmraid and ICH7 / LSI embedded RAID controller on an Asus RS120-E3 (PA4)
 

We just got an Asus RS120-E3 (PA4) server with the Intel ICH7R chipset,
and we cannot get RAID to work using dmraid or the
LSI MegaRAID driver.

Does anyone knows if dmraid should recognize these devices
as "fakeraid" devices ?

We have 4 SATA disks installed.

We have previously configured and initialized in the BIOS
tool the last 2 disks (wich will map into /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd)
to be in mirror (RAID1).
(/dev/sda and /dev/sdb were used as regular disk drives).

BIOS was configured to use RAID, not AHCI.

Unfortunately dmraid does not recognizes any RAID devices.
(uname -a, dmraid, dmesg and lspci for FC5 output below).

We have also tryed to boot from CD using
linux noprobe
and selecting the LSI megaraid_mbox or megaraid drivers
but installation could not proceed at it detected no storage devices at all.

We have also tryed the proprietary drivers from ASUS CD or
ftp.supermicro.com
trying to mount from a USB pen (as the server has no floppy drive),
and booting from CD with
linux dd
but with no sucess on FC5 or CentOS 4.3 on loading the driver.
We can browse and select the file with the
floppy image in the USB pen filesystem,
but then it says it cannot mount it. (?)

This is a pity as from the manual, it appears that Linux (RedHat or Suse) would be supported. :-(

We haven't actually figured out if LSI MegaRAID driver is
for our hardware, or not (ie. only for LSI SATA RAID boards).
Does anyone know if this hardware should work, what are we doing wrong ?

uname -a
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.16-1.2122_FC5smp #1 SMP Sun May 21 15:18:32 EDT 2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

dmraid -ay -vvvv:
WARN: locking /var/lock/dmraid/.lock
NOTICE: skipping removable device /dev/hdb
NOTICE: /dev/sda: hpt37x discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sda: hpt45x discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sda: isw discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sda: lsi discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sda: nvidia discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sda: pdc discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sda: sil discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sda: via discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdb: hpt37x discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdb: hpt45x discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdb: isw discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdb: lsi discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdb: nvidia discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdb: pdc discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdb: sil discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdb: via discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdc: hpt37x discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdc: hpt45x discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdc: isw discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdc: lsi discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdc: nvidia discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdc: pdc discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdc: sil discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdc: via discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdd: hpt37x discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdd: hpt45x discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdd: isw discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdd: lsi discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdd: nvidia discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdd: pdc discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdd: sil discovering
NOTICE: /dev/sdd: via discovering
No RAID disks
WARN: unlocking /var/lock/dmraid/.lock


dmesg:
SCSI subsystem initialized
libata version 1.20 loaded.
ahci 0000:00:1f.2: version 1.2
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.2[B] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.2 to 64
ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0100 32 slots 4 ports 3 Gbps 0xf impl RAID mode
ahci 0000:00:1f.2: flags: 64bit ncq pm led clo pio slum part
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xF881C900 ctl 0x0 bmdma 0x0 irq 19
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xF881C980 ctl 0x0 bmdma 0x0 irq 19
ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xF881CA00 ctl 0x0 bmdma 0x0 irq 19
ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xF881CA80 ctl 0x0 bmdma 0x0 irq 19
ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123)
ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:7c6b 83:7f09 84:4773 85:7c49 86:3e01 87:4763 88:407f
ata1: dev 0 ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 490234752 sectors: LBA48
ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
scsi0 : ahci
ata2: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123)
ata2: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:7c6b 83:7f09 84:4773 85:7c49 86:3e01 87:4763 88:407f
ata2: dev 0 ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 490234752 sectors: LBA48
ata2: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
scsi1 : ahci
ata3: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123)
ata3: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:7c6b 83:7f09 84:4773 85:7c49 86:3e01 87:4763 88:407f
ata3: dev 0 ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 490234752 sectors: LBA48
ata3: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
scsi2 : ahci
ata4: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123)
ata4: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:7c6b 83:7f09 84:4773 85:7c49 86:3e01 87:4763 88:407f
ata4: dev 0 ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 490234752 sectors: LBA48
ata4: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
scsi3 : ahci
Vendor: ATA Model: Maxtor 6V250F0 Rev: VA11
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sda: 490234752 512-byte hdwr sectors (251000 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 490234752 512-byte hdwr sectors (251000 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write through
sda: sda1 sda2 sda3
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
Vendor: ATA Model: Maxtor 6V250F0 Rev: VA11
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sdb: 490234752 512-byte hdwr sectors (251000 MB)
sdb: Write Protect is off
sdb: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sdb: drive cache: write through
SCSI device sdb: 490234752 512-byte hdwr sectors (251000 MB)
sdb: Write Protect is off
sdb: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sdb: drive cache: write through
sdb: sdb1
sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdb
Vendor: ATA Model: Maxtor 6V250F0 Rev: VA11
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sdc: 490234752 512-byte hdwr sectors (251000 MB)
sdc: Write Protect is off
sdc: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sdc: drive cache: write through
SCSI device sdc: 490234752 512-byte hdwr sectors (251000 MB)
sdc: Write Protect is off
sdc: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sdc: drive cache: write through
sdc: unknown partition table
sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdc
Vendor: ATA Model: Maxtor 6V250F0 Rev: VA11
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sdd: 490234752 512-byte hdwr sectors (251000 MB)
sdd: Write Protect is off
sdd: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sdd: drive cache: write through
SCSI device sdd: 490234752 512-byte hdwr sectors (251000 MB)
sdd: Write Protect is off
sdd: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sdd: drive cache: write through
sdd: unknown partition table
sd 3:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdd


lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation E7230 Memory Controller Hub (rev 81)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH/GHM (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 01)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH/GHM (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controllers cc=RAID (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6702PXH PCI Express-to-PCI Bridge A (rev 09)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 11)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 11)
05:02.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL (rev 27)

If you are using dmraid, it will come up as some device node under /dev/mapper. Probably the drive exist but the installer utilities is not looking in /dev/mapper.

Try using Gentoo. I think Gentoo has all SCSI storage controllers as built-in and device mapper is also included. It should show up. Setting up Gentoo for a server is several times quicker than setting it up as a desktop.

fake SATA ICH7 controller.
 

I'm have a similar problem and just spoke to a friend about it. He suggest turning of the RAID funciton in the BIOS and just setting up the Software RAID in the OS.

This seems to make sense as the so called "fakeraid" just seems to be another type of software raid.

I'm using the latest Debian Etch. Installation was no problem and the system runs OK what I set the RAID in the BIOS and use software raid in Debian. However when I simulate a HD failure the system will boot but not mount the remaining good HD.

I'm going to try the software raid only setup, disabling raid in the BIOS, and see what happens.

You should avoid any fakeraid setups, because it's specific to the controller. A software level raid is more compatible. You could also try various BIOS versions (which you can upload via RS232) if RAID seems to hang.

BudgetDedicated

ASUS RS120 - LSI RAID drivers for CentOS 4.3
 

I had the very same problem this week with the ASUS RS120 rack mount system.:cry:

I tried to build the drivers from the source code on the ASUS CD that came with the system, with no luck. I even try to contact the developer at LSI.
They told me to contact ASUS.

Did that too, but they still haven't contacted me. :tisk:

I did find a way to load the drivers while doing a fresh install of CentOS 4.3 ServerCD.

First I loaded the OS on the drives with-out RAID.
Followed the steps on this web site hvdkooij.xs4all.nl/docs-linux-drivers.cms

Made a new driver disk using a USB floppy disk (Thanks DAD for the use of the drive) ;)

By the way CentOS 4.3 ServerCD is 2.6.9-34.EL and I used the RedHat AS/ES 4 driver image from the ASUS CD.

Reinstalled CentOS using my new driver disk, and well it works just fine.
No problems durring install, it just found the drivers right away.

Now I hope when I upgrade the kernel with YUM I don't need to make a new one again.
:cool:

I have the same problem with an Acer server with Intel embedded Server Raid that use an Lsi ICH6R sata Raid 0,1 chipset.

I create a Raid 1 from controller bios but the system does not see it.

I try to install fedora 4/5 but the system load only ahci driver to see the two sata disks that i mount on the server (250Gb).

I found megaide driver for RedHat 9 from supermicro ftp and all work fine.

Now the fedora 4 include Lsi megaide 5.09a driver but if i load them fedora does not see the raid yet.

The only possibility is to do a Software Raid with no raid from Controller bios.

Can you help me?

I will try my best to help.

BTW I had one of my new WD 10,000RPM 72Gb hdd die, Thank god for RAID 1

Which server is it? and did you check out the web page I posted?

i've done
 

It was an Altos g320 Acer server.

I have already create a Raid Software with DiskDruid and all it's ok.

Sorry but i have not tried with your site to build the driver disk but im'sure that in the future i will do it.

Thank a lot

Bye

Hi,

I really need some help from all of you who have ASUS RS120 servers.
Can you instal an smp kernel?
When I try to instal centos 4.3 with smp kernel, the network interfaces doesn't work.
The system says networkis up but they can't even get IP from DHCP ou use any private IP.
I can only start the network with non smp kernel which is no good because I need to use dual core processors.

My systems work fine with centos 3.7 smp kernel but not with Centos 4.x.
I've tried to compile nem drivers but the problem persists.

Do you have the same problem?

Thanks
Feijao

Hello Feijao,

I'm sure that it's possible to run SMP in a stable fashion. I'm not sure about the CentOS/RHEL 3 or 4 kernels or their differences, but at least on a 'vanilla' kernel these RS120s work fine. So at least it is good to know that there are several working setups. Perhaps it's possible to use a 'plain vanilla' kernel in CentOS?

--
Kind regards,

Erik de Bruijn
BudgetDedicated

http://www.budgetdedicated.com/ | Tel. +31 13 4690625 | Fax. +31 84 2248796 | Adres: Adelaarshorst 9 | Zipcode NL-5042 XE

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.
After your post I went to check more information and found out the problem!
I had ACPI deactivated in BIOS.
After I've activated it the network start working fine.
I never thought it could interfere.

O now have a Centos 4.4 with 2.6.9 kernel working fine.

Just found one more problem. The CENTOS install didn't recognize the SATA disks when in IDE mode. I had to go to bios and changed to AHCI for it to work. Somehow, a windowze install detected the disks fine.
I think this is related to the 1004 bios because we have some identical servers with older bios and never had this problem on centos install.

By the way, our linux servers use Software RAID and not hardware raid.
We had to deactivate motherboard "hardware" RAID in windowze machines because we were having many problems with it. The servers stop booting, hard drives not recognized, etc..
Did anyone experienced the same?

Thanks
Paulo

switch of maxtor disks for other
 

Maybe this interests anyone... Sorry to bother those

We gave up on hardware RAID and tryed software RAID (mdadm).

After a few months running Fedora 5, we had problems about every 15 days
whith software logging ATA timeouts on a paricular disk device
(but different disks every 15 days), which "hanged" the whole IO.
After a reboot all was Ok.

(Ok, we should use CentOS, not Fedora for a server - I know :)

After many calls,
the supplier that sold us the machine admited that these Maxtor disks
may have problems with this LSI controller (even in windows).

So, sometime during the next week, we will try to exchange the
Maxtor disks for Hitachi,
or even buy a hardware RAID controller.

The point is, that buying hardware for Linux is a complete
adventure in the dark, which may be full of hassles.
Maybe the next time we will aprove the extra budget for an HP server
Linux solution.

Joao Luis

Since everybody seems to know Asus RS120, I have an offtopic question. Using RHEL update 4, how do you know if one of the drives fail under RHEL? There seems to be no beep whatsoever from the RS120 hardware to inform admin of defective or degraded partition, is there any utility under RHEL to do so? And in case you do spot the problem via ESP :) and replace the degraded hard drive while inside OS (RHEL), how would you know the status of rebuilding?

If you do reboot, you will see that it's rebuilding, but in case disk0 is the one that's being rebuilt, how will you go back into operating system?

If in case disk1 is the one that's being rebuilt, will you be able to go back into OS? From what we experienced, this is not the case. It reports of swap partition problem, or swap file problem, and doesn't go in. I thought it was supposed to be Raid 1 mirroring (hardware), how come with Disk0 alone, we can't boot into RHEL?

Thanks, any help will be appreciated.

lsi megaide raid on MAXDATA server
 

Hi,
I've got the same problem of yours on a MAXDATA server. I tried to install several linuxes: ubuntu, fedora 5, debian 4, slackware 11 but ...nothing!
The os couldn't find the raid controller: I looked up in the latest kernel release but there isn't any support to lsi megaide raid.
The only chance to make a raid seems to be a software raid or buy an external raid controller supported by Linux.
Further issues?

Lsi
 

Since it has been a little while between post I thought I would come back talk about the steps I have taken with my RS120

Software RAID was not an option for me as I need all the CPU I can get some days. So I had to use the LSI built-in to the RS120, but after looking into it I found that this device was also using the CPU (maybe not as much).

So I had to change the config.

I did some research and found a some great productions from HighPoint (http://www.highpoint-tech.com/)

They came with limited CentOS support and also had hot swap for SATA.
I was very happy. The server has been up for about 200 days now with not one problem, Network, Hard Disks all running at great speeds.

I did a fresh install when I got the new RAID card and the OS was installed with 5mins. WOW what and install (Yes it was only Server version of CentOS 4)

High Point Production was Rocket RAID 2300 for $217 AUD from www.auspcmarket.com.au (Thanks Guys) same place I bought the RS120