Silicon Image 3512 SATA PCI controller

appleshampoo · 02-14-2010, 03:14 AM

Hi folks,

I recently purchased a PCI SATA controller, the Silicon Image SIL3512 (2 SATA ports). I have debian lenny 5.0.4 installed on a separate 80GB IDE drive which is still working fine. After hooking everything up, I am not seeing any block devices under /dev for the two hard drives I have connected. This is my first experience with SATA so I am sadly a little clueless, and googling for this problem has been yielding a lot of really, really old documentation (c. 2004).

I can see the SATA controller via lspci -v:

Code:

05:09.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3512 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3512 SATARaid Controller
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 18
        I/O ports at 1010 [size=8]
        I/O ports at 1020 [size=4]
        I/O ports at 1018 [size=8]
        I/O ports at 1024 [size=4]
        I/O ports at 1000 [size=16]
        Memory at fc510000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at c4000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
        Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
        Kernel driver in use: sata_sil
        Kernel modules: sata_sil

I get a lot of messages on dmesg and none of them look like errors:

Code:

[    2.114146] libata version 3.00 loaded.
[    4.405442] sata_sil 0000:05:09.0: version 2.3
[    4.405442] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:05:09.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[    4.405442] scsi0 : sata_sil
[    4.406490] scsi1 : sata_sil
[    4.408494] ata1: SATA max UDMA/100 mmio m512@0xfc510000 tf 0xfc510080 irq 18
[    4.408550] ata2: SATA max UDMA/100 mmio m512@0xfc510000 tf 0xfc5100c0 irq 18
[    4.729449] ata1: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 310)
[    5.049445] ata2: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 310)
[    5.053428] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: version 2.12
[    5.053428] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.2[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[    5.053428] ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: MAP [ P0 -- P1 -- ]
[    5.389857] scsi2 : ata_piix
[    5.389857] scsi3 : ata_piix
[    5.389857] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x24f8 ctl 0x2810 bmdma 0x24d0 irq 18
[    5.389857] ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x2800 ctl 0x2814 bmdma 0x24d8 irq 18

During boot, I do get a message from the card saying to press F4 or Ctrl+s to enter the RAID configuration utility. However, if I do this, it then says that no device was found and continues booting normally.

I don't necessarily care about the RAID setup, I was planning on using LVM to mirror the 2 drives anyway, although RAID1 through the card could be nice, I dunno. Really I just want to be able to see the discs! Am I missing a kernel module, a userspace package, do I just need to init something? This page has a bunch of Linux SATA info, but the section on Silicon Image doesn't look like it's been updated since 2004...

I am running Debian lenny 5.0.4 and my kernel version is 2.6.26-1.

I know motherboard info would probably be helpful, I'm not sure exactly what I have though (I got this PC second hand from work). I know it's a dual 3GHz Intel but that's about it. I looked around the board itself and couldn't find anything more specific, is there a way through the command line to figure out the exact mobo I have?

Thanks for any help.

appleshampoo · 02-14-2010, 03:49 AM

This is the machine I have, if it helps anything:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/q...11632_div.HTML

It's the "Convertible Minitower."

jefro · 02-14-2010, 12:02 PM

You have to be able to configure it in the raid array even if it isn't an array. Raid arrays have a sort of second bios to your system bios. I'd look at the owners manual for that card just to be sure of that.

The problem with the SIL raid is that it is not a true raid device. Some linux distros may see the drives as single drives after you created a single array in windows and others will not. The SIL tends to be what is called FAKE raid or Soft raid or such.

Unless you know others have have used that raid array and your distro you will have to make your own cookbook.

The board info may see it as a scsi device but since your bios may or may not know about add on cards it is also hard to tell. Your system bios plays a part in how you can boot to that array and how well it may work. It will most likely never show drives in system bios.

appleshampoo · 02-14-2010, 02:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefro

You have to be able to configure it in the raid array even if it isn't an array. Raid arrays have a sort of second bios to your system bios. I'd look at the owners manual for that card just to be sure of that.

The problem with the SIL raid is that it is not a true raid device. Some linux distros may see the drives as single drives after you created a single array in windows and others will not. The SIL tends to be what is called FAKE raid or Soft raid or such.

Unless you know others have have used that raid array and your distro you will have to make your own cookbook.

The board info may see it as a scsi device but since your bios may or may not know about add on cards it is also hard to tell. Your system bios plays a part in how you can boot to that array and how well it may work. It will most likely never show drives in system bios.

Yeah, I think I may be hosed with this hardware combination. The system BIOS doesn't see the SATA drives at all, and the RAID utility (this is kind of like the second BIOS, right?) won't run because it apparently can't see them either. I'm a little disappointed because all of the docs I read online for this card pretty much said it works but you have to do XYZ to the kernel to get it to work, I don't remember reading anything saying the hardware just wasn't compatible at the BIOS level. I guess if that is the case, no one had my exact mobo.

jefro · 02-14-2010, 05:15 PM

The system bios will usually never see add on card drives. Might be some real raid cards or onboard arrays.

Raid bios is second. The system passes to it after post usually.

See these. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=499939

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-cards-288379/

http://www.siliconimage.com/support/...=29&cat=3&os=1

skjthielen · 07-12-2010, 04:55 PM

I'm having a similar problem.... And found a suggestion to try irqpoll on the kernel line in grub.conf from the following... http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...oll-do-691514/.

I've tried it, and now the machine boots! Next step, configure the disk...

glorsplitz · 04-27-2013, 10:58 AM

Hi, without knowing about this thread, I needed extra storage for my older computer,
I just finished the following.

installed the card, card showed up when rebooting, installed hard drive, hard drive
showed up after card, partitioned/formatted hard drive, now have sata and extra space,
details follow

Slackware 14.0, 3.2.29-smp, 1 G memory
/proc/cpuinfo: GenuineIntel, Pentium III (Katmai), cpu MHz: 501.050, cache size: 512 KB
dmidecode: motherboard: Version: ASUS P3B-F ACPI BIOS Revision 1006 Release Date: 05/19/2000

SYBA SD-SATA150R PCI 2.2 SATA Controller Card $12.99 newegg
00:0a.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3512 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 01)
Kernel driver in use: sata_sil

Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001 3TB 7200 RPM $134.99 newegg

parted -a optimal /dev/sdc
mklabel gpt
mkpart primary 1 -1
align-check opt 1
1 aligned
print
Model: ATA ST3000DM001-1CH1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 3001GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 3001GB 3001GB ext3 primary

created mount point, modified /etc/fstab, reboot

df -h /dev/sdc1
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc1 2.7T 14G 2.6T 1% /somemountpoint