Topic: Controller IDE Driver disk

[Nicola]

I bought the Highpoint Rocket 133 IDE controller (hpt302) and i download the drivers compiled for RH 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0

I tried each of them but, due the different kernel version, I'm not able to run into sme server 5.5 or 5.6 beta1.

Does someone out there can help me compiling the right driver?

Thanks,
Nicola

[Jeff]

I have experience compiling the highpoint drivers (although I'm using the Rocket Raid 404 hpt374)  Do you still need help with this?

[Nicola]

no thanks, i found a guy who make the driver for sme 5.6

If you'd like the driver, let me know, i'll send you.

Thanks,
Nicola

[Joshua B]

Is there anyway to install SME 5.6 while using a RocketRaid 133?

I can't get SME to recognize the card and unlike a debian or Redhat install I can't go to expert mode and specify a driver disk.

There are 2 IDE drives attached to the PCI card (RocketRaid 133) in a mirrored conifg.

I've thought about breaking the mirror, putting one of the drives on the Motherboard's controller, installing, modifying the install and possibly kernel, and then putting the drive back on the RAID controller.  Is that the best or only way?

Thank you,

Joshua

[Jeff]

If you press [Caps lock] before the e-smith disk boots, you will receive a boot: prompt.  At this prompt, type " accept dd ", installation will proceed as normal - and include the opportunity to use your driver disk.

I'm apparently having "issues" creating my driver disk for 5.6.  (still working the problem.)  I did however successfully install 5.1.2 on a RocketRaid 404 (4 channel) last year, so I'm confident about getting it to work on 5.6.

[Joshua B]

Thanks Jeff,

I think I've run into the same issues with the driver disk.
I create the disk per Highpoint's instructions and then use the "accept dd" trick you mentioned.
I get a prompt to insert the driver disk which I do.
The computer then says Installing XXXX.
Then I get the prompt: "Please insert the 1 driver disk now."
If I click OK (I assume the driver disk I made is actually a driver disk, but I uncompressed the modules from modules.cgz on a second try) I get the error:

Failed to mount the Driver disk:
No such device

Any thoughts?

[Jeff]

Joshua:

Yes I am receiving exactly the same error!  I don't know where to go from here...  hoping a driver disk guru will respond...

[Nicola]

Joshua and Jeff:

I am receiving exactly the same error too!! (

[Joshua]

Here's an update of things I've tried:
I installed  5.6 on an IDE drive attached to the controller on the motherboard - no RAID.
Then I tried to get the server to recognize the RocketRaid 133 controller
      Insmod sd_mod, scsi_mod, and hpt37x2.o
      No luck

      added the redhat 7.3 kernel supplied by Highpoint.
      No Luck
      the kernel version is 2.4.18-3, not 2.4.18-5.  I'm not sure what the differences are but it didn't boot - Kernel panic - during boot.

      If someone has developer mods on a system and would like to make  a new kernel as per the Highpoint directions that would be great.  I'm not real  comfortable doing things like that yet and don't have a spare system to put the kernel source files, et al on.

Joshua

[Jeff]

Joshua:

I have compiled both the Rocket Raid 133 driver (hpt37x2.o) and the RocketRaid 404 (hpt374.o) drivers for the e-smith 5.6 kernel.

You can download the files at:
RocketRaid 133 -> www.acetechpartners.com/hpt37x2.o
RocketRaid 404 -> www.acetechpartners.com/hpt374.o

At your service,
Jeff

[Joshua B]

Jeff -

You ROCK!

I'll give the 133 driver a test this weekend.  Have a great one.

Joshua B

[Seth]

I experienced the same error as everyone else with the htp374 driver disk provided by highpoint.

 I downloaded Jeff's hpt374.o and tried insmod mod_scsi, insmod mod_sd, insmod hpt374 but it still failed with various unresoved symbols (register_scsi_..., unregister_scsi_..., I think)

Jeff, did you build that module you provided for i686 or Athlon? I'm running an Athlon (single processor)

Cheers,
Seth.

[David]

I have followed the previous threads about the highpoint 404 controller and even downloaded jeffs hpt374.o file. I am still unable to make this work. I am fairly new to SME but here is my situation.

I have SME 5.6 up and running on an IDE drive. Now I want to run two mirrored drives off of the RAID 404 controller. Can someone point me to more details about what I need to do.

Jeff, were you successfull with the 374 drivers? What should I need to do to make them work with a pristine 5.6 install?

thanks all,

David Nowakowski

[Jeff]

I'm currently working out the details of getting the RocketRaid 404 to work with a virgin install of SME 5.6.  I will update everyone on my success (or failures) as I go along. I have SME 5.1.2 (production box) working on the Rocket Raid 404 ->love it.  I just received a second card to work out the raid issues on 5.6 on my test box.

Also... I compiled the RR404 driver for intel.  I will upload the Athlon version tonight. http://www.jeffandsteph.com/athlon/hpt374.o

Have a great weekend.

Jeff

[Seth]

That would be great Jeff, thanks!

Seth.

[jeff at jeffandsteph.com]

Sorry for the delay.

Here's where I stand...

I found that my cpio compression parameters for my 5.6 driver disk were incorrect. I have since recompressed the archive and now the install finds the hpt374 driver (yea...) HOWEVER, it is looking in a directory called 2.4.18-10 (not -5).  Putting the -5 compiled driver in the -10 modules directory leaves me at my current state - the driver can not load because of an unresolved symbol scsi_register_R57c62879.

I suspect this may be due to the kernel upgrade between -5 and -10, so I have found the source code for -10, and will try recompiling with this version of the source.  I'll let you know how I make out.

P.S. My local machine has been off the net while I worked with the 404 driver disk.  I'll reconnect it and send the Athlon driver to my website as promised earlier.

At your service,

Jeff

[Jeff]

I have uploaded the Athlon version of the 404 driver compiled to the 2.5.18-5 source code.  It is located at:
http://www.jeffandsteph.com/athlon/hpt374.o

[Charlie Brady]

Jeff wrote:
 
> I have uploaded the Athlon version of the 404 driver compiled
> to the 2.5.18-5 source code.  It is located at:
> http://www.jeffandsteph.com/athlon/hpt374.o

Do you have the source code there as well? If so, where?

I'm interested to know why you you've gone to so much trouble to build this module? Do you really need the raw speed? Many servers have their disks essentially idle nearly all the time, and the disks can saturate the network over an ATA33 interface.

Charlie

[Seth]

Charlie:
>I'm interested to know why you you've gone to so much trouble to build this module? Do you really need the raw speed? Many servers have their disks essentially idle nearly all the time, and the disks can saturate the network over an ATA33 interface.

Uh, well in my case at least I'm after RAID 1 reliability, not raw speed. If I'd realised there was a problem with hpt374 I would not have bought an older raid controller! .Having got it, it seems a shame not to use it, however.

Maybe software raid gives just as much reliability these days and it's
mainly a perforance difference?  Perhaps this is a bit too bleeding edge and I should fall back on software raid? Reliability and hot-swap ability are key for this client, not speed.  

Thanks  for the driver Jeff, will try it tonight.

Cheers,
Seth.

[Charlie Brady]

Seth wrote:
 
> > I'm interested to know why you you've gone to so much
> > trouble to build this module?

> Uh, well in my case at least I'm after RAID 1 reliability,
> not raw speed.
...
> Maybe software raid gives just as much reliability these days
> and it's mainly a perforance difference?

It's software raid whichever way you do it. I've seen no evidence that the HPT implementation is more reliable that the standard kernel software RAID, but my gut feeling is to trust the standard kernel more.

> Reliability and hot-swap ability are key for this client, not
> speed.

You don't get host-swap capability with standard kernel software RAID. Do you with the hpt driver? Do you really need it?

Charlie

[Joshua B]

Just to chime in:

I'm going the hardware RAID route because of the CPU and I/O overhead.  Not that there's very much, but the computer makes 1 call to the card and it splits the read/write requests between the RAID 1 disks.  The RocketRaid 133 also has 2 IDE channels.

Do I need all that?  Not right now.  Will I in the future?  Possibly, and the hardware is relatively cheep right now.  Why not include it in the initial install with an eye to the future?

Joshua B

[David Nowakowski]

I have to say that, given the problems I have had getting the HPT404 to work (still unsuccesfull I might ad), I have been tempted to try the softwate implementation of RAID in SME. The problem with that is that I do not want to mirror my OS drive. I have a set of 60 GB data drives that I want to mirror. I do not want to have the OS on my data drive. There is just to much that can go wrong that might choke up the OS. When that happens, I dont want it happening to my data. I have longed believed that seperating the two is a best practice. As it is, if I do something that messes up my install, I just reinstall to my OS drive with no concerns about my data.

just my .02

David Nowakowski

[Jeff]

Charlie... you can find the source at: http://www.acenet-tech.org/cdj/dev-tools/sme56/

[Martijn T]

Jeff, I noticed you managed to compile an Athlon 2.5.18-5 kernel module for the HPT374, however, you also had an Intel 2.5.18-10 version, which i couldn't insert because I have a clean v5.6 (the reference errors)
Do you have an updated version for the older kernel, or could you suggest some instructions howto manage my problem.
I also tried to compile the source from highpoint on a virtual machine, without succes, ofcourse..
(I have a single PII with the Rocketraid404, and I'm not an advanced user)