[Novalug] Adaptec 1420 & Linux

[Clif Flynt]

I'm playing with some on-the-cheap raid tests using an Adaptec 1420
"HostRaid" controller.

The 1420 can be more accurately considered as a 4-port SATA adapter
than as a RAID controller.

My first attempt was using the May or so release of SuSE 10.1. 

I Installed SuSE with no 1420 and then installed the 1420 and rebooted.
This worked, and the 1420 was identified OK.  I next tried power-down,
attached 4 drives and rebooted.

This caused the system to hang at:
...
sata_mv 0000:00:0c.0 Applying B2 workarounds to unknonw rev
sata_mv 0000:00:0c.0 32 slots 4 ports unkonwn mode IRQ via INTx
ata1: SATA max UDME/133 cmd 0x0 ctl 0xF91a2120 bmdma 0x0 irq 11
ata2: SATA max UDME/133 cmd 0x0 ctl 0xF91a2120 bmdma 0x0 irq 11
ata3: SATA max UDME/133 cmd 0x0 ctl 0xF91a2120 bmdma 0x0 irq 11
ata4: SATA max UDME/133 cmd 0x0 ctl 0xF91a2120 bmdma 0x0 irq 11

I tried booting from the DVD with the 4 SATA drives attached to the
1420, and the DVD boot hangs at "Starting hardware detection"

I've got a brand new Fedora Core 6 DVD that came with Linux Magazine,
so I booted that.

This boots and installs fine.  The 4 drives were seen during the 
disk definition phase of the install, and described as being a software
raid collection.

Reboot and log in as root, and tried

/sbin/mdadm --create --verbose /dev/md0 --level=raid5 \
    --raid-devices=4 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1

  This got me a set of errors from mdadm about the "Device or resource
busy".  /var/log/messages notes that the "superblock magic" is wrong on
these devices.  Catting /proc/mdstat shows no personality.

  I suspect that I'm a short step from getting things to work under
Fedora, and a somewhat longer step from understanding what I just did.

  I suspect that some sort of boot-option would make SuSE happy, and
I might be able to get that to work if I could install it.

  For the record, I realize that the simplest and best way to go is
with a real RAID controller, not one of the JBOD type, but I really
want to see if the md stuff actually works and someone could set up a
reliable system on the cheap.


  Clif

-- 
.... Clif Flynt ... http://www.cflynt.com ... clif at cflynt.com ...
.. Tcl/Tk: A Developer's Guide (2nd edition) - Morgan Kauffman ..
  ..14th Annual Tcl/Tk Conference:  2007,  New Brunswick, NJ ..
.............  http://www.tcl.tk/community/tcl2006/  ............