FYI onboard promise raid & new red hat install

terrance · 09-20-2002, 05:43 PM

Dear whomever

This inconvenience took me too many hours to locate the solution, so I thought I'd post it here for anyone in the same position.

I just built a new comp ; amd1900, asus a7v333 (w/ promise raid pdc20276), 512ddr @ 333, chaintech GF3 ti200, 2 x maxtor 40GB 5400's, ...blabla bla , I really like it

I built the comp, started it and built the raid array, then started the bootable redhat 7.3 cd for the install. the promise device was not recognized! no hard drives detected

what to do is simple enough.

1) go to www.promise.com and DL the drivers for your raid chip

2) the file is zipped with two more zipped files inside, one for uniprocessor and one for multiprocessor), extract one of the files to a floppy. ( I did mine in win98)

3) boot the computer with the bootable redhat cd.

4) *** At the boot prompt type "linux dd" , this will request that you insert the disk with the required device drivers (the foppy that you made) and it will walk you through install of the device drivers for your raid chip

If this was useful, drop me a line at jon@cipryk.com

xblue · 09-24-2002, 08:53 AM

oh...the same problem with me ..thx for u article,,u save me ..

i am use promise raid pdc20276 too,

but i cant find the drivers . can u give me the link thx very much ..ha ,

terrance · 09-24-2002, 04:32 PM

http://www.promise.com/support/linux_eng.asp

I used the fasttrack100

Skirge01 · 10-04-2002, 04:15 PM

This doesn't work for me. I've tried both Mandrake (8.x, 9.0) and Red Hat (7.2, 7.3, 8.0) and neither one is capable of working with my RAID 0 array.

FYI... I've got 2 WD 120GB drives striped together. When I set up the array, I even partioned it in preparation for a Linux install. I've got another 80GB WD, too.

If I install Mandrake, Grub just freezes on boot. This might be an issue with Grub, but I don't know much about Linux to troubleshoot it.

Red Hat 7.3 with the driver disk wouldn't allow me to do step #12, line #2 for a new system (mount /dev/fd0 /mnt). I get that it's either busy or already mounted. Can't go any further. It also errored out when trying to create the boot floppy during installation. The Promise 20276 is not listed in the "IDE issue" piece, so I followed the alternate instructions that don't include passing the parameters to the Kernal.

Red Hat 8.0 can't even see my RAID array. For kicks, I was going to try the driver disk, but again, RH can't seem to access my floppy except when it's used to boot for installation.

If anyone has some suggestions for either installation, I'd be interested in hearing it.

Thanks!

dirgon · 10-08-2002, 02:46 AM

I tried the steps that terrance outligned above, but like Skirge01, I am unable to get the Linux system to see the RAID-0 array where my XP system is installed. Part of the problem, I believe is because they are formatted as NTFS. RH8 doesn't appear to like it too much.

I just wish I could get GRUB setup properly so that I could at least boot from either Red Hat or Windows depending on what I chose or if my wife fired up the computer.

Skirge01 · 10-08-2002, 06:51 PM

Well, I've got only one partition set up as NTFS on my array. The rest are FAT32. So, unless RH can't see it due to a single NTFS partition--that's not even the first partition--I don't think that's the issue.

The worst part is that I've already got the Linux partitions defined and formatted. RH7.3 was able to install, but I don't think it was ever capable of installing the Promise drivers into the kernal. RH8 can't even get that far!

Seems very odd to me.

dirgon · 10-14-2002, 03:48 PM

I compiled the 2.4.19 kernel over the weekend and installed it. RedHat now sees my MBFasttrak controller on the Asus A7V333 motherboard and knows that it has two drives attached. However, it thinks that only one of those drives is in the RAID array. I am stumped at the moment.

dirgon · 10-14-2002, 03:48 PM

I compiled the 2.4.19 kernel over the weekend and installed it. RedHat now sees my MBFasttrak controller on the Asus A7V333 motherboard and knows that it has two drives attached. However, it thinks that only one of those drives is in the RAID array. I am stumped at the moment.

dirgon · 10-14-2002, 03:49 PM

Sorry for the double post there, guys. I had a happy finger on the mouse just now.

cyberdiamond · 10-16-2002, 04:14 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Skirge01
Red Hat 7.3 with the driver disk wouldn't allow me to do step #12, line #2 for a new system (mount /dev/fd0 /mnt). I get that it's either busy or already mounted. Can't go any further. It also errored out when trying to create the boot floppy during installation. The Promise 20276 is not listed in the "IDE issue" piece, so I followed the alternate instructions that don't include passing the parameters to the Kernal.

If anyone has some suggestions for either installation, I'd be interested in hearing it.

Thanks!

The same thing for me, not being able to mount the floppy drive to pass the extra parameters.
BUT it is working anyway!
I tried unmounted it incase it was already mounted to another different directory but no go. I did make a boot floppy after it was installed though.
Anyone have any idea's ???

Skirge01 · 10-16-2002, 11:14 PM

Hehe... I think we managed to stump the experts! :-) As funny as I think that is, I would really like to find out how to get some version of Linux installed on my RAID setup.

Oh well... maybe someone in the know will read this soon.

jshroads · 10-23-2002, 02:45 AM

Thanks for the above...If nothing else, it's convinced me to go with software raid until something better gets figured out by someone.

hackthese · 10-23-2002, 09:31 PM

I have install RedHat 7.3 successfully by the same method Terrance has suggested at the beginning of these posts...

My question is...has anyone got this working with RedHat 8.0? Installing the drivers from Promise as done successfully in 7.3 does not seem to work in 8.0. If you do not install any drivers the install see all of the individual drives, but not as the "entire" array as it should.

Somebody help if they know...

Thanks,

Nate

RazorH · 11-06-2002, 07:33 AM

I just recently bought a Gigabyte GA-&VARXP MB that has the Promise PDC20276 ATA133 raid controller on it.

with slackware, I can use the raid.s bootdisk with slackware-current (2.4.19) and see the array (mirror) and seemingly partition it ok, but when I actually try to install I get seg faults during the formatting process.

the slack 8.1 raid.s bootdisk says it has fastrak support, but it doesn't look like it actually does (I don't see anything in the boot list that looks like it's looking for a promise controller like I do with the other bootdisk).

I haven't gone much deeper into the situation than that at this point though I've been looking around for info for a couple days on this.

There's a couple things I'm going to try I think to see if I can get something to work.. just wanted to post here and see if anyone might have some ideas.. or any experience with promise/this chipset in slackware.

mart1n · 04-20-2003, 03:36 PM

All,
you may want to try using the Promise TX2000 Linux drivers for Redhat 8. I'm running Redhat 8 successfully in a RAID 0 setup , including booting from the RAID 0 from a GIGABYTE GA-7VRXP motherboard, with 2 x 80 GB drives. Install Redhat with Linux dd as the driver must be loaded during the installation, otherwise the RAID 0 is not recognized properly. After that, just do a regular setup, eventually with a manual partition.
This runs flawlessly.

good luck, mart1n.