[UFO Chicago] Yay LNX-BBC

[Rob Latham]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2003 at 09:29:03PM -0800, Jesse Becker wrote:
 
> The hardware is a dual-xeon workstation, with an on-board
> Promise 20267 asic (this is the same as a FastTrak 100 PCI
> card).  

you know what's fun about promice 20267's (and i presume all of
promise's ide "raid" cards?):  they aren't actually hardware raid. 

> Promise has limited support for Linux systems, and
> has deigned to provide a binary-only module that runs on
> very, very specific versions of Redhat's *stock* kernel. 

that binary module?  yeah, that's the promise "hide our crappy
hardware behind a module that does software raid" module.  

i hate you promise.  i hate you sooo much.  

You've got these systems running, so maybe you don't want to dork with
them, but you'll find better performance if you use pdcraid:  i'd be surprised -- nay, shocked -- if redhat's kernel doesn't come with it. 

from Configure.help:

Support Promise software RAID (Fasttrak(tm))
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_PDC
  Say Y or M if you have a Promise Fasttrak (tm) Raid controller
  and want linux to use the softwareraid feature of this card.
  This driver uses /dev/ataraid/dXpY (X and Y numbers) as device
  names.

  If you choose to compile this as a module, the module will be called
  pdcraid.o.

==rob

-- 
Rob Latham                                        Chicago, IL USA