are you trying to use the raid array as your root partition? If so, it seems like the kernel is unable to find the driver for the sx6000. Make sure the driver is in the initrd.img file (look at the man pages for mkinitrd) and make sure that grub is using that file when the kernel boots.

A simple explanation is as follows:

When the kernel boots it needs drivers to run different things, such as your ethernet card, scsi card, sound card, etc. You have two options. You can either compile it into the kernel or you can compile it as a module. If its a module then the kernel loads the module when needed. However, you have the chicken and egg problem because the module is sitting on the hard drive but the kernel doesn't yet have the driver for the scsi card. Basically you make an initird.img file so that the kernel can use it load the driver out of memory. Somehow (and this is the part that is somewhat confusing) is that grub and lilo (your bootloader) can load this file off the disk using some type of low-level access (i.e. without the scsi driver). Hopefully that helps someone

This is our experience.

Debian system (irrelevant), vanilla 2.4.18 kernel, i2o_block as module.

SuperTrax bios 1.10.00 build 10. Everything works fine.

SuperTrax bios 1.10.00 build 15. Modprobe i2o_block hangs at detection
of i2o drives.

SuperTrax bios OS set to `other'.

So it seems to us, that the SuperTrax bios minor revision number (the
build, in fact) is very important in getting things to work.

---davidav

I have done so, but when I try to insmod i2o_pci, he says 'no such device' (or so). Any idea what reason? I am using SusE 8.1 but with the patched 2.4.19-kernel.

Do you have an entry in modules.conf for i2o_pci? Any I/O-Port or similar things?
I also don't have the directory /dev/i2o/hd/ (subdirectory hd is missing). Is it nesessary to do some mknod ?

Thanks in advance

EG

I've got a RH7.1 system running (finally) with the SX6000 as the boot partition. It's a RAID 5 array of 5 20Gb WD hard drives.

I used the RH7.1 Drivers.

I'm using an ECS K7S5A M/B, 256Mb of Ram, Gigabyte AG32S video (Rage 128) and a 1300Mhz Duron Processor.

My problems are that the on-board LAN (Realtek 8139) is not recognized (I just used a NIC that was), and it didn't recognize the Video card, so it's strictly a command line box right now.

But I guess it can be done.

Hallo!

I've the same problem like davidav! I've running a box with suse 8.0 and 2.4.19-ac4 ... but insmod i2o_block hangs....

Do anybody have a bios-"downgrade" to the minor number 10? Because i didn't save it before i upgrade.....

HELP!!!!

I'm installing a RAID 5 array and need to know how to set it up for storage with a "hot swap". The PAM management for Windoze did this just fine, but I'm no longer running Windoze 2000 Server.

Just installed Redhat 8.0, running an SX6000 RAID controller, and 5 80G Barracuda hard drives.

Internal HD is a 40G IBM, running on an Intel D854EBG2 with a 1.7G Celeron, 256mb PC2100, and a Thermaltake Aquarius II water cooler.

I am fairly new to the Linux world, so please be gentle on me.

I've installed redhat 8.0, kernel 2.4.20 from RH on a 120 gb IDE master disk.

I've used insmod on the i2o devices... but still, I can't use fdisk /dev/i2o/hda to partitition my 4 120 gb WD disks.

Is the promise BIOS driver version essensial here, if so, what is recommended ??

Hope to get a fast feedback

Svein Johansen

After trying reading a lot of forums and trying numerous, numerous things, including what is written in this thread... I found the easiest and most reproducable way to get the SX6000 working with SuSe8 8.1.
Here goes:
OS: SuSe 8.1
Kernel: 2.4.19
Motherboard: GA-7VRX
MEM: 512M PC 2100
hda: Segate 80G
hdab: Segate 80G

SX6000 - 5+1 Western Digital 120G EIDE in a RAID 5

Do the following as rooT:
vi /etc/sysconfig/kernel

Changed my INITRD_MODULES line to the following:
INITRD_MODULES="i2o_core i2o_pci i2o_block i2o_config jbd ext3 ide-scsi"

shutdown -g0 -i6 -y

It should recognize the device and allow you to create your slices... assuming that you've already setup and initialized your array.

The drive will come up on /dev/i2o/hda.

Enjoy.

c0l245

I have been struggling with an sx 6000 for a while.

Trying to run with i2o drivers work for firmware version 58 only.
The new firmware versions, 77 and 91 break i2o compatibility.
However, you will need the 77 or 91 to get it to work with MPX based motherboards, such as the Asus A7M266-D, which I use.

So, with an MPX based motherboard there is little chance yet to get it to work with i2o drivers.

There is also some problems with the pti_st drivers and patched kernels. Pure vanilla works ok (tried on 2.4.19 & 2.4.20), but when you apply patches the pti_st is unlikely to work.
I have been in contact with the developers. They are eager to support interesting patches, but are located in china, behind heavy censorship, and cannot access sites such as sourceforge, etc. Meaning, they don't even have access to some of the interesting linux code.
I am amazed that promise haven't solved this problem beforehand.

I have been trying to get the sx6000 to work with vanilla 2.4.20 SMP with no luck, I load the i2o modules, but get reset error on pci moudle.

When I checked the kernel log, I see an error with pdc20276 stating that device is not available because of resource collisions. So I give up on i2o.

How do I build the Promise driver for 2.4.20? I have tried to follow the readme form promise, but I don't understand it.

I do this and this is my end result
Which only generates errors, here are a few:
If anyone knows what I'm doing wrong or has a correct make file for 2.4.20, I would love to see it.

So, I've got Suse 8.1 running on a box, K6-400 CPU, 256Mb RAM, Adaptec 2940, a pair of 120Gb IDE's as a (linux RAID) mirrored pair as the root and a Promise SX6000 with 1.10 BIOS. Hanging off the Promise are 6 200Mb Maxtor drives.

Thanks to the messages on this list I managed to get the SX6000 working under Linux without too much trouble using the i2o drivers mentioned in a previous post. It's been working away now for 6 weeks, but this week has started to give issues - it might have been before, but I'm pushing it harder now than before. Looking back it did seem excessively slow at times.

Two days ago the filesystem was unavailable, couldn't unload the i2o drivers, so rebooted. The BIOS startup screen for the Promise declared the array as critical and started rebuilding disk 2. I pulled disk 2 and gave it a thrashing on another box, no problems. Put it back in and the array started rebuilding again. Rebuild completes, boot the server and everything seems happy again...until today. System is going __VERY__ SLOOOOW_. CPU load normal, access to the 120Gb disks is at normal speed, it's just the Promise RAID. Interestingly the array is not beeping an error, but I strongly suspect when I reboot it will do.

I'm running a backup now, but I'm really not convinced this is a hardware problem with the disks. Anyone else having array critical problems?

I noticed an issue posted to the promise website

http://www.promise.com/support/downl...ory=All&os=100

This is going on about Western Digital 200Gb drives, but is dated June 2002, and there is no further update.

I gave up on the promise products, and have been buying from 3Ware now.

They are a true ide hardware raid, and the driver for 3ware cards are built in the kernel.

www.3ware.com

Hi, I have BIG problems with SX6000. I tried much kernels (2.4.16, 2.4.18, 2.4.19, 2.4.20) with and without ac patches.
I have always different problem. I think the main problem is that dmesg says that hi doens can enable die controller becouse of resource collision.

Can everybody send me a kernel (or kernel config).

Because I m a newbe with i2o (and english) I woud be happy for a step by step instruction.

Thanks Re-EL

The best patches for the Promise RAID cards are available at www.3ware.com It's a pretty severe approach that requires the removal of the Promise card and the purchase of an Escalade series RAID card. But support for the card is built into the Linux kernel.

Sell the Promise card to someone you're not particularly fond of.

After my last post things haven't been resolved. I've had to move a lot of my frequently written data off of the Promise RAID onto another filesystem, which has greatly increased its reliability, but I still have to be really careful how and when I write to the filesystem, and I've lost all confidence in the security of the data on there.

As suggested by this forums 3ware employee I've ordered one of their IDE RAID 8 channel cards for a replacement, but it's going to be real fun finding a home for the 450Gb of data on the Promise RAID whilst I convert the drives to the new controller. On the plus side, I get to put an extra drive on one of the two additional channels to use as a hot spare.

So, if anyone wants a Promise IDE RAID card for a microshit system it'll be on ebay.co.uk in about a week....