Hi All,

Quick question.

Has any1 been able to get a 3ware 9550sx-4lp working in Slack?

I currently have it installed on a Supermicro P8SCi, and I have tried every Kernal that I can think of. Some of them find nothing others I see load a driver but find no 3w-xxxx cards. The test26.s finds the card and loads the driver but I am unable to find the device. No sda appears

I have searched the forums and read the many problems with SATA and I have read the legnthy topics by bone crusher but everything I see say this card should be supported in the kernel.

If I load RH9 and load the driver it works fine, I wanted to see about trying Slack as I only have RH experience.

Am I missing something simple? I never see a sda device created in the kernel boot messages and when I do a DF -a all I see /dev/fd2 which is my CDROM, same goes in the boot messages, I see the hda device created but nothing else.

Any information is greatly appreciated.

Sparky2k

First, try to use fdisk -l to see the partitions on the system, df will only show those which are mounted.

Could you actually install Slackware or the installation disk is the sata one?

Fdisk -l shows nothing

fdisk -l /dev/hda show the cd-rom

I am installing from the 10.2 ISo CD-roms I downloaded from Slackware.org

I can even get the partitions set so that I can install the OS.


I installed RH9 to make sure the Hardware works and that is currently up and running. I just would like to play with Slack and see if I like it. If so I will migrat all of our ISP boxes to it. The tuff part appears that to build a kernel that will support non-standard hardware you need slack already running. I don't know that I have that kind of time, I had hoped my hardware was standard enough that it would install easily.

I maintain/build all of our inhouse linux boxes for a small isp, all on rh9 we use bind, sendmail and apache.

If I am out of my league just say so =) and I will stick to what I am familar with.


Regards,


Spakry2k

Well, it's a shame you don't give Slackware a try, but well, if you're using that computer to work and it's working now, I won't try to convice you to move.

However, if you've a spare computer to try, from what I read here http://www.3ware.com/support/OS-support.asp the module to support that card is not included in the 2.4 kernel but it is in the 2.6 series, and that's why test26.s kernel must be seeing it. You didn't tell, however, if you tried fdisk -l or looking at dmesg when you used test26.s kernel, maybe it was attached under another device name.

I don't need convincing I want to try it =)

but I need help and thank you for that.

I Did do a fdisk -l nothing shows up.

The only way something will show up is if I do a fdisk -l /dev/hda ---> this shows the CDROM

When I use test26.s it sees the card, but never creates the device (example /dev/sda) is not created. I have looked trhough the messages many times and test26.s is the only kernal that even get this far.

Let me know what to try and I will try it.


Regards,

Sparky2k

I'm glad to see you really want to get Slackware working

I actually never used a SATA disk so I can't help you with more details, the only thing that pops in my head now is that maybe udev is not run by default on the Slackware installation disk when using test26.s kernel, check if it does: ps -A | grep udev

Also, if you can give more details about what you're getting on dmesg, I guess it will be useful to help you further.

Thank you for the reply.

Udev is not running when I use the test26.s kernel.


I will list what is says in the dmesg about the 3ware card below. The main problem seem to be that it never see's the connected disks (raid 5 array).

In RH I just load the driver disk and everything is cool, in slack you have to build a specifiec kernel for the hardware? Are there any additional kernel commands I can run to load a driver? From what I have read I don't believe so but it doesn't hurt to ask.

I am manually typing this, unless you can tell me how to get it without doing so.

3ware Storage Controller device driver for Linux v1.26.02.002
3ware 9000 Storage Controller device driver for Linux v2.26.02.002
nsp32: loading...

It then continues loading other devices but never says anything about a sda or even a /rd/c0d0

When I type fdisk -l nothing comes up

This mother board has a built in sata controller as well it is an Intel ICH6 version, I have the sata portion disabled in the bios.

Any ideas?

Sparky2k

I've just checked test26.s's config file, and raid support is compiled as module. You may want to try loading the needed modules (I don't know their names, but a quick look at a howto on tldp.org should tell you).
Once you load the modules, you should be able to install Slackware. Remember, to use test26.s as kernel to be installed when asked during installation, AND after installing, make a initrd image with the modules you need inside it. There's a readme on how to do it on the testing/ directory, and the man page of mkinitrd will guide you too.

Edit: I've just checked, the module for raid 5 is called.... guess, raid5
I hope this works

By the way, on Slackware you don't have to build a kernel for each hardware, the default kernels try to cover most of the hardware but being specific to it to avoid bloat. The "problem" is that Slackware still uses 2.4 kernel as default, the raid.s module supports 3ware cards, but the old ones, your card is supported in 2.6 or in 2.4 but with a external (not included in 2.4 kernel's tree) module.
It's recommended, however, to recompile the kernel specifically for your hardware, that will slim down the kernel and probably make it smaller and faster (and it's a very good learning experience).

Here are the config files in case you want to check the differences as I did: http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/s.../raid.s/config
http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/s...est26.s/config

You'll notice the lack of support for CONFIG_SCSI_3W_9XXX (under SCSI low-level drivers in raid.s 2.4 kernel) and that in raid.s the RAID support under Multi-device support (RAID and LVM) is built-in in the kernel (the letter "y" while in test26.s it's "m")

The answer to you question goes something like the reason that your getting this behavior is because your using a kernel older that 2.6.14.

2.6.14 is the first kernel version that supports the 3ware 9550sx controllers. Despite the appearance otherwise.

The 3w-9xxx.ko file that gets compiled pre 2.6.14 will only work for the 9000 series controllers.

When you try to yse the old driver you get a single line in dmesg about the 3ware driver having loaded, but then nothing else.

Your going to have to compile a new kernel.

Good luck.

sorry to be a noob, but i'm trying to install centos 4.2 under what reads like similar circumstances and am confused as to my next step. i have the 3w 9550 sata raid controller, and my install will not recognize the driver. i've tried driver disks from 3w, etc, and i'm not getting anywhere.

anyone have any suggestions?
thanks.

I have a 9550SX-8LP that I'm attempting to get working. I have recompiled my 2.6.14.4 kernel for the 3ware-9XXX support but now I get this in my /var/log/messages:

If I had to venture a guess I'd say it was a ... udev issue?? I don't know, that's why I'm posting here. Any help would be greatly appreciated. TIA

-Tomaczar

bump bum bum bump

Hi All,
I got the SATA disk's detected on slack 10.2 using the boot IMG on floppy from:
http://www.3ware.com/kb/article.aspx?id=14862

This image includes the ataraid.i version kernel compiled for use with the 3ware 9550SX card.
After this insert the two slackware root(boot) disks and follow the setup.
(I inserted the slackware 10.2 disk to continue the setup for the basic linux.)
I could succesfully fdisk the partitions. (1x 1GB linux swap, 1x 3GB linux.)
And install the OS.

When asked whick kernel to use, I selected to use the currect one from boot disk.
(Because this one obviously detects the card.)
After this is installed I removed all my floppy's and CD discs and boot.

Nothing happends :-(
Or reboots after raid bios initialization. Or freezes with a flicking cursor.
I tried this on an identical system (same procedure) same problem.
(so it isn't a hardware malfunction.)

Is there anyone who got this working right now?

I currently do. I'm using Slamd64, but it should be close enough. Did a slightly different method though.....

I threw in a crappy IDE drive for the time being and did the following:

1) Booted up with Bare.i and installed everything to that drive. Installed the bare.i kernal as my booter and rebooted.
2) Once the machine came up I compiled a new kernel which supported the 3W card and also the Raid stuff. Rebooted again this time using that kernel.
3) Once up I partitioned my drives. Using myswap and mkfs.reiser I formated them. Then used rsync to copy everything from the crappy drive to the raid array. I also modifed /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf to reflect sda instead of hda. This is where things get a little weird. I'm not sure which one of these things actually got Lilo to boot from those drives, but I used these commands:
lilo -M /dev/sda mbr
lilo -C /mnt/hd/etc/lilo.conf /dev/sda (MNT Is where I had all my RAID stuff hooked up for the mod and copy BTW)

I used this command too, but don't think it mattered:
lilo -A /dev/sda1

I later downloaded the latest version of the 2.6 kernel and compiled it up with my previous config after I knew I had everything booting and so forth without an issue and its been booting and running off of the 3Ware 9K card ever since.
-Smillie