[CentOS] IT8218 PCI IDE RAID CARD

Thu Dec 23 21:25:47 UTC 2010
Keith Roberts <keith at karsites.net>

On Thu, 23 Dec 2010, Keith Roberts wrote:

> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> From: Keith Roberts <keith at karsites.net>
> Subject: [CentOS] IT8218 PCI IDE RAID CARD
> 
> I have big problems with this card not working on Centos 5.5
>
> If I run Parted Magic (kernel 2.6.32.11) from CD, then the
> IT8212F IDE PCI controller is detected OK, and I can access
> the WD hard drive on the controller, in r/w mode.
>
> Running Centos 5.5 I get lots of I/O errors at boot time,
> and cannot get r/w access to the drive from GParted.

It seems that to get this card to work as a plain non-RAID 
controller under Centos 5.5, one has to do an overwrite of 
the PCI controller card's BIOS.

It either works in RAID mode, or ATAPI controller mode as a 
mass storage controller. There one BIOS upgrade for 
programming it as a RAID controller, and another BIOS 
upgrade to program the PCI card as an ordinary IDE 
controller.

Well I have flashed the BIOS on the ITE8212F PCI controller 
card with the ATAPI upgrade, and now it appears to the 
Centos 5.5 kernel as a plain PCI IDE controller - 100% 
native.

This is just what I needed, as I would like to move all disk 
I/O intensive stuff onto a small 40GB drive on this 
controller. So the kernel needs to see this drive at boot 
time, before the kernel has a chance to load any dynamic 
drivers.

Kind Regards and a very Happy Christmas to all,

Keith Roberts

-- 
In theory, theory and practice are the same;
in practice they are not.

This email was sent from my laptop with Centos 5.5