[CentOS] SiI 3114 and RAID

[Johnny Hughes]

On Thu, 2007-02-15 at 09:57 -0800, Florin Andrei wrote:
> I've two machines with almost identical hardware (slightly different 
> CPUs). The SATA/RAID controller is SiI 3114.
> 
> One of the servers was installed a while ago by someone else, it's 
> running Fedora Core 5 and RAID is enabled:
> 
> # df -m
> Filesystem           1M-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/dm-6               125931      2990    116441   3% /
> /dev/dm-1                   99        13        81  14% /boot
> tmpfs                     1012         0      1012   0% /dev/shm
> /dev/dm-2                 9917       151      9254   2% /tmp
> /dev/dm-3                 9917       237      9168   3% /var
> # cat /etc/modprobe.conf | tail -n 1
> alias scsi_hostadapter sata_sil
> 
> I installed CentOS 4.4 64bit on the other system, but I could not enable 
> RAID. The installer was always seeing 2 separate drives instead of one 
> RAID device.
> 
> Was it my mistake? Did I not enable the proper settings in the BIOS? (I 
> tried quite a few different settings)
> 
> Or is it perhaps that the CentOS kernel does not have the proper drivers 
> to support SiI 3114 in RAID mode?

It is most likely that the current kernel does not support the RAID in
that scenario, though I am not sure.

Looking at the latest testing kernel's changelog that we have built in
the testing repository (2.6.9-42.37), I do not see any added support for
Sil 3114 RAID to that kernel (that would not be in the standard
kernel) ... though there are sata_sil and sata_sil24 kernel modules in
the standard kernel that depend on libata.  No idea if they support RAID
though.

The 2.6.18 kernel in CentOS5 will have more hardware support and most
probably support for those options, if they are in FC5.

You might try rhel5b2 (downloadable from the upstream provider) on that
machine if you don't need it in production immediately ... as CentOS 5
should be a fairly easy upgrade from there _OR_ use software RAID with
the C4 kernels.

Also I found this page to see about getting drivers:
http://www.siliconimage.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid=28&cid=3&ctid=2&osid=2&

On the FC5 machine you can do:

lsmod

And see all the modules loaded ... also look in /etc/sysconfig/hwconfig
as it may list the module for the controller.

You can then look for that module name with the modinfo command on
centos-4.

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes

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