Hopefully a simple question.

I have a 3Ware 9500 4LP SATA RAID Controller and I would like to install Slackware 10.1 to a RAID 5 array.

My question is this, the RAID array is configured (RAID 5, 4x 250MB Disks), and apparently the Slackware 10.1 has support for 3Ware Controllers.

Can anyone tell me if my card is support in particular, what if any additional configuration maybe necessary in order to use whichever dev it needs.

I believe it will be (when it works) /dev/ataraid/d0p1 (or something similar).

Kind regards.


TH

I use these cards on my work servers. They configuration is very straight forward, and the drives will show up as normal /dev/sd*

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Could you possibly point me in the right direction of some documentation, as this is the first time I have tinkered with ATA RAID and RAID in general on Linux.

I have skimmed through the ATA-RAID-HowTo, but that was more aimed at the RH distro. I initially started to try fdisk using the following command

# fdisk /dev/hda

Will not be able to write the partition table

Waring: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

#

then

# ls /dev

shows that there are no sd*.

I'm pleased to hear that the combination of 3Ware and Slackware usually work, which is reassuring.

Thank you in advance.

Regards

Toby Heywood

Actually, (I should've specified), my work servers run Debian; but that should be of no consequence

Did you compile the driver for the card into your kernel? It's located under Device Drivers > SCSI Low Level if memory serves.

Matt,

Nope, I haven't re-compiled the kernel (that's next on my to do list) however I read the Slackware Installation Help and kind of assumed that 3Ware support was included.

From slackware installation help...

ATARAID.I - This is a bootdisk with support for IDE RAID controllers. The install disks now have preliminary support for these controllers as well. The drivers included are: 3ware Hardware ATA-RAID controllers. Promise Fasttrak(tm) IDE RAID. Highpoint 370 software RAID. Many of these controllers will require some degree of do-it-yourself setup before and/or after installation.

...end

My interpretation was that booting from the installation CD and specifing ataraid.i at the boot: prompt would surfice. But in practice this would not appear to be the case.

I will compile in support for 3ware and see if that get's me any further. Thank you for your help.

Regards

Toby Heywood

I'm not sure if the default slackware kernel would have this as a module; further, I'm not sure if the support for this series of cards even existed in 2.4. If they did I would assume that the 2.6 kernel would have better support.

I'd grab 2.6.11 from kernel.org and compile in the driver I alluded to above.

Good Luck!