Topic: Extremeraid 2000 (Dac960) SME 5.1.2

[ADSERG]

Q, Does SME 5.1.2, 5.5 5.6 supports Mylex Extremeraid 2000 ?

I have loaded sme 5.1.2, 5.5, & 5.6 and none of them seem to want to know. This is a bit strange seeing this had 5.1.2 on here before.

When i load 5.1.2 it seems to identify the raid and carries of with the install untill reboot, Then it just kicks over and hangs.

Like i said i have had sme running on this for over a year quite happily.

Mylex website has a GAM server for linux what ever that is? And it seems that you load it after the install, Well thats fine but i need to install SME first.

Where can i find a linux driver for aMylex 2000 card without having to figure out 101 things to do before installing it?

Ive been on the Redhat site plenty of documentation but cant find a driver or drivers for this.

Thanks

Adserg

Does anyone out there have a raid box using a Mylex Extremeraid 2000 raid controller I could really do with your help.

[rob fantini]

This may not solve your problem,

 But  I've got 5.6 working with a Mylex card. Its a different model card.
But most cards  use the DAC960 driver

 I had a hard time using any of my mylex cards  on certain 2.4 kernel releases.   The problem occured with redhat, mandrake and SME.  I think the problem was with certain kernel releases.

 SME 5.5 had problems.   Sme  5.6 beta 2 worked.  [i think it was beta 2 that worked].

 I tried many diff distros etc and forget all the symptoms. but sometimes the distro would install then not boot. sometimes hang on install.
 
 here is info from our production system using a Mylex Acellraid 170 card:


 the kernel on the sme system is  
Linux fbc2 2.4.18-5 #1 Mon Jun 10 15:37:14 EDT 2002 i686 unknown


proc/rd/co/current_status:

***** DAC960 RAID Driver Version 2.4.11 of 11 October 2001 *****
Copyright 1998-2001 by Leonard N. Zubkoff
Configuring Mylex AcceleRAID 160 PCI RAID Controller
  Firmware Version: 7.01-01, Channels: 1, Memory Size: 16MB
  PCI Bus: 0, Device: 16, Function: 0, I/O Address: Unassigned
  PCI Address: 0xDC000000 mapped at 0xD083F000, IRQ Channel: 5
  Controller Queue Depth: 512, Maximum Blocks per Command: 2048
  Driver Queue Depth: 511, Scatter/Gather Limit: 128 of 257 Segments
  Physical Devices:
    0:7  Vendor: MYLEX     Model: AcceleRAID 160    Revision: 0701
         Wide Synchronous at 160 MB/sec
         Serial Number:
    0:10 Vendor: SEAGATE   Model: ST318452LW        Revision: 0004
         Wide Synchronous at 160 MB/sec
         Serial Number: 3EV06MGJ000072387EBP
         Disk Status: Online, 35807232 blocks
    0:12 Vendor: SEAGATE   Model: ST318452LW        Revision: 0004
         Wide Synchronous at 160 MB/sec
         Serial Number: 3EV06KZM00007238QMJG
         Disk Status: Online, 35807232 blocks
         Errors - Parity: 1, Soft: 0, Hard: 0, Misc: 0
                  Timeouts: 0, Retries: 0, Aborts: 0, Predicted: 0
  Logical Drives:
    /dev/rd/c0d0: RAID-1, Online, 35807232 blocks
                  Logical Device Initialized, BIOS Geometry: 255/63
                  Stripe Size: 64KB, Segment Size: 8KB
                  Read Cache Disabled, Write Cache Disabled
  No Rebuild or Consistency Check in Progress

[ADSERG]

Thank You Rob

Every little helps mate.

Regards

Adserg

[ADSERG]

Hmm

If i put one scsi disk in it works fine with sme, put two in it just doesnt want to know.  So i tried Redhat 7.1 (the only one i have) same result but i expected that.

I then tried Mandrake 9.0 same result. Last but not least i tried Suse 7.3 by golly it works first time everytime. I then tried Microsoft Advanced Server (Had to load driver) and again works first time everytime.

Well that rules out hardware. I see on this site that some people have had problems with this type of Mylex Card has anyone got it working i have been to Mylex Website and down loaded this GAM server rpm for linux but sme again doesnt seem to like it.

SME 5.1.2 has worked with this in the past with a full raid 5 simply installed and worked but this time 5.0, 5.1.2, 5.6 dont want to come out and play, Suse & Microsoft do, but I want to play with SME. (Sit down hard fold arms and hold breath.)

Any Help Greatly Appreciated

Regards

Adserg

[ADSERG]

Ok

Got it working. This is what i did, hope it helps someone in the future.

I have a VA Linux 2240 and a Mylex Extremeraid 2000 this uses the Dac960 driver.

The Problem: The Main Server

Server seemed to go out of Sync and the raid disks stayed on all the time making the system very slow. We disconnected the nic cards to see what would happen and it stayed the same even from reboot. We copied all data to another standby server and were running in no time at all really.

I broke the Raid of the Main Server and recreated it and all the disks started playing the game and behaving themselves, I went to install 5.1.2 as this is still our choice of os at the moment. Carried out a Normal Install and it kicked off without a problem, Formatting, O/S Transfer, Create Boot Disk then Reboot. At this point Abnormal End 11?

Nothing has been copied to disk, Tried 5.5 & 5.6 all the same. This had me scratching my head.

I Noticed that if i installed on a single disk 36.7 gig drive the install worked everytime, If i added the raid then again it would simply fail. At this point i Hit ALT/F4 and scanned through what was there to see that it seemed to complain of a shortage of space to install everything? Dont know why this would be?

I then chose the second option in 5.1.2 of creating a software raid, The only reason i did this is because it gives me the choice of selecting my own root/Swap/Linux Native sizes.

I made Root 1 gig in size, I make the swap partition also 1 gig, Then gave the rest of the size to the Data Partition.  Loaded 5.1.2 and it booted straight in to SME 5.1.2 after install.

It initially appeared that before i did the above that sme was giving root a 200 meg size limit. As my server stands at the moment Root on my server is 1 gig in size with 418/mb used, & 580/mb available. I dont know why this is maybe You Linux Gurus can shine some light on it?

I just thought id write this down in the hope that anyon with a mylex card or what ever raid card may fnd this to be a little bit usefull. Probably doing it this way may waste disk space but hey it's up and running and behaving.

Kind Regards

Adserg