not closed afaict... at least, i know i'm following it...

i still haven't found a reasonable solution... the closest i have is to use a suse x86_64 kernel from 8.2 beta or 9.0 supplemental and load the 2.4.19-SMP module from silicon image... but then your stuck with that kernel...

unless someone can tell me how to load an older kernel module into a newer kernel?...

For the Silicon Image chipset the solution I've found to be the most stable one was to apply a patch called k7_tune_medley_custom.patch found on a thread at the forums in http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/view...2659d91da94030

I have just tried to install both Mandrake 9.0 and Redhat 9.0 on my computer. For my hard dirve setup, I have 2 WD 36 GB Raptors in RAID 0. I wish to install linux, but when I go to do this, it sees my HDs as two seperate drives rather than one 72 GB drive. Also, whenever I try to get into disk drakk or disk druid, it says:

cannot read hard drive, ti is too corrupted. Hde must be initialized to read material, this will cause loss of all data

What do I do, I have been researching possible solutions, and I have gotten no where. I even tried the driver that Silicon Image provides, but to no avail. What can I do??

Thanks

Most onboard "RAID" controllers (at least Promise and VIA) are in fact Soft-RAIDs, that is the main processor has to do the job. That is apparently the reason why linux detects them as individual drives because you can use the linux-build in Softraid which (as far as I figured out) is rather well tested (Thus what you encountered is not a bug, it's a feature).
I personnally had problems with my RAID 1 (Mirror) which was most likely due to the VIA-driver (SuSE 9.0).
Note that the data format of the linux Soft-RAID is somewhat different from that of the hardware manufacturer. A drive that was created with linux soft-RAID will work on all linux machines, wheras you might encounter big trouble when you try the same with a drive setup using the promise or VIA driver.

With respect to SoftRAID. There is a book "Managing RAID on linux" published by O'Reilly which I found usefull. Of course there is a lot of online help available.

Good luck
Stephan

Also if you have a Silicon Image chipset, you may try to create the LVM volume with RAID during RH9 or Fedroa installation, but that'd mean you will lose the information on the drives (because as the installer already told you) the drives will have to be intialized.

Thanks, but is there any way to accomplish this without loosing my data? The odd thing about this, is that when I try to manually use Disk Druid, and I look att he various partitions, the total amount of space that Linux says there is adds up to more than I have....As I said, I'm using two 36 GB Raptors in RAID 0, so hence 72 GB (actually it comes to about 70) but Linux reports a total of 150 GB or so when you add it up.....why is this?

Also, when I do install using Disk Druid, i can get as far as the part that involves me installing the boot loader, which ALWAYS fails....am I destined to never get Linux to work without a new HD?? Is this the way to go, go out and buy a cheap IDE 10-20GB PATA Hard drive?

Thanks

I am having an interesting SATA linux problem. When I boot with a Knoppix 3.3 CD, I can mount my Western Digital 250 SATA drives perfect. However I installed Knoppix to disk (on an IDE primary disk) and when I boot from the disk I cannot mount the other 2 SATA drives. I get all sorts of errors like dma_timer_expiry and timeout waiting for dma.

I am assuming that if it works on the CD boot, that maybe it is a driver that gets loaded on CD boot but not when I boot from the same Knoppix 3.3 installed to HD? Is that a good guess? It does not appear to be using that Silicon Image driver either from CD or HD so it must have another way of recognizing the drives.

So what could be the problem here??

Here are some outputs:

============================================================

knoppix@linux:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
autofs4 8756 0 (unused)
af_packet 13448 0 (unused)
efs 7436 0 (unused)
hfs 76832 0 (unused)
minix 19848 0 (unused)
nls_iso8859-1 2844 0 (unused)
ntfs 51168 0 (unused)
xfs 525120 0 (unused)
reiserfs 169616 0 (unused)
agpgart 38296 0 (unused)
i810_audio 25064 0 (unused)
ac97_codec 11884 0 [i810_audio]
soundcore 3428 2 [i810_audio]
3c59x 25936 1
serial 51972 0
usb-ohci 18184 0 (unused)
usbcore 57472 0 [usb-ohci]
apm 9768 1
rtc 6908 0
ext3 63940 1
jbd 46100 1 [ext3]



root@linux:/home/knoppix# hdparm -v /dev/hde

/dev/hde:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 30401/255/63, sectors = 488397168, start = 0



root@linux:/home/knoppix# hdparm -i /dev/hde

/dev/hde:

Model=WDC WD2500JD-00GBB0, FwRev=02.05D02, SerialNo=WD-WMAEP1328916
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=57600, SectSize=600, ECCbytes=74
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=8192kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=65535/1/63, CurSects=4128705, LBA=yes, LBAsects=268435455
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: device does not report version:

* signifies the current active mode

Knoppix

What kerenel version does the CD boot, and what version does the HD install boot? Also try looking for the drivers being loaded (lsmod is your friend here)

SII3112

If you wanna have the RAID array to work in Linux using this chipset, sadly you will have to create the array and then make it LVM from within Linux. You may want to check the official page for the Silicon Image soft RAID kernel patch for the adequate instructions.
http://www.infowares.com/linux/

hi,

I've read through this thread many times now but I'm still not entirely sure how to proceed. I just got a 80gb Maxtor SATA hard disk and I would like to put Slackware on it. Right now, I have a dual boot Mandrake 9.2 and WinXP. My motherboard is a MSI KT3 board and I have a SATA controller that uses the Silicon Image chipset. How should I proceed from this point? After I install the hard disk, do I have to change the BIOS or anything? I've looked over Google and such and cannot find any information about how the procedure goes.

thanks

fobius, install your drive and then you should get the patch I posted earlier and download a plain vanilla 2.4.22 kernel from www.kernel.org, then follow the steps on this guide to compiile your own kernel with the proper support for the SII chipset. I don't know why a patch for software (Silicon Image) RAID causes the freezes to stop (and the performance to rise) when using a SII3112 chipset

thanks for the tip, i'll check it out. i've been using linux for sometime but i've never compilied my own kernel or messed around with hdparm, etc. is there any specific reason to use a 2.4.22 kernel and not 2.6? is SATA performing anywhere near expected rates?

thanks

The patches on the site have early support for kernels up to 2.4.23, I guess they're working on the new patch for 2.6, and in my own experience the only kernel with which this patch and drivers are stable is 2.4.22 (2.4.23-24 have sporadic freezes). As for 2.6 I had not tried it on that mobo (A7N8X deluxe), however reports from www.nforcershq.com state that with the 2.6 kernels the problems with SATA drives are gone. I for one should first try this, because this chipset is quite inconsistent from MoBo to MoBo.

Cheers!

hmm..i see. let me know if you get around to tryin out the 2.6 kernels with SATA. by the way, i couldn't find the link to the patch you mentioned. also, i've read that some other people use a different patch, called libata. have you tried using this with 2.4.22? how does it compare to the 3112 patch?

thanks!

http://www.infowares.com/linux/ This is the link to the patch I use... I never heard of the libata patch you mention, post a link please!

hi,

this is the ftp to check out libata.

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kerne...patchkits/2.4/