Greetings - I'm looking to put some cheap storage into my server, which is running centos 3. I'm looking at the Maxtor SATA/150 PCI Card and a big maxtor sata drive. I would like to make sure that CentOS has driver for this controller. I looked in Red Hat's hardware database and did some google'ing but I couldn't find any info to confirm that this card is compatible. Any ideas where else to look?
Thanks Mike
Michael Thon mrthon@verizon.net wrote:
Greetings - I'm looking to put some cheap storage into my server, which is running centos 3. I'm looking at the Maxtor SATA/150 PCI Card and a big maxtor sata drive.
Multiple sources list this as an OEM'd Promise PDC20375 (FastTrak TX2).
The kicker is the older kernel, I don't think support is included (I'll look when I have time). I've never tried patching with the GPL driver, but it should be possible on 2.4.21.
I would like to make sure that CentOS has driver for this controller.
Promise finally got enough nags that it released the driver as GPL in 2003. So it certainly builds on kernel 2.4. I've just never checked for compatibility, as I largely avoid Promise in general.
I looked in Red Hat's hardware database and did some oogle'ing but I couldn't find any info to confirm that this card is compatible. Any ideas where else to look?
Grab the SRPM and install it. Then cd to /usr/src/redhat/SPEC and prep the tree with "rpmbuild -bp kernel-2.4.spec". Now look in /usr/src/redhat/BUILD at the kernel tree -- either just at files for IDE, or possibly do a quick config and see if it's listed under SATA support. It will be "Promise FastTrak TX2".
If I have time, I'll do so tonight.
If you want absolute compatibility plus managability (and a reliability option) for a few bucks more, the 2-channel SATA 3Ware Escalade 8006-2 is under $150. Since it's going in a server, it can't hurt to have the future option of RAID-1 by merely adding another drive.
On Tue, 2005-07-26 at 14:13 -0700, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Grab the SRPM and install it. Then cd to /usr/src/redhat/SPEC and prep the tree with "rpmbuild -bp kernel-2.4.spec". Now look in /usr/src/redhat/BUILD at the kernel tree -- either just at files for IDE, or possibly do a quick config and see if it's listed under SATA support. It will be "Promise FastTrak TX2". If I have time, I'll do so tonight.
Actually, I see a number of SATA patches off-the-bat in the latest 2.4.21-32.0.1.EL release ...
rpm -qpl kernel-2.4.21-32.0.1.EL.src.rpm ... linux-2.4.21-sata-carmel.patch linux-2.4.21-sata-diskdump.patch linux-2.4.21-sata-taroon.patch linux-2.4.21-sata.patch ...
And after prepping, I see a number of SATA drivers under the SCSI system:
Serial ATA (SATA) support (CONFIG_SCSI_SATA) [Y/n/?] AHCI SATA support (EXPERIMENTAL) (CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_AHCI) [M/n/y/?] ... Promise SATA TX2/TX4 support (EXPERIMENTAL) (CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_PROMISE) [M/n/y/?] ...
The actual driver file in the build is: /drivers/scsi/sata_promise.c
Seems to be the same driver version 1.01 that is in the latest 2.6 kernels (i.e., I ran modinfo against my sata_promise on FC3). Don't know how good the Promise driver is, but the sata_nv says "experimental" as well, and works perfectly for me.
If you want absolute compatibility plus managability (and a reliability option) for a few bucks more, the 2-channel SATA 3Ware Escalade 8006-2 is under $150. Since it's going in a server, it can't hurt to have the future option of RAID-1 by merely adding another drive.
Actually, I was thinking of configuring software RAID right off the bat but the 3Ware controller looks like a much better option.
thanks for the advice Mike
Michael Thon wrote:
If you want absolute compatibility plus managability (and a reliability option) for a few bucks more, the 2-channel SATA 3Ware Escalade 8006-2 is under $150. Since it's going in a server, it can't hurt to have the future option of RAID-1 by merely adding another drive.
Actually, I was thinking of configuring software RAID right off the bat but the 3Ware controller looks like a much better option.
Definitely, you'll thank yourself :).
thanks for the advice
;)
Mike
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Bryan J. Smith -
Michael Thon -
Ugo Bellavance