Highpoint & ide probing problem

Highpoint & ide probing problem

[Ian Leonard]

Greetings,

WI have an itox motherboard with an hpt 370/372 chip and a sata raid 
chip. I am trying to use the Highpoint but not the sata. We need to 
access 4 drives individually not as a raid.

On booting, the HPT bios sees all 4 drives. Linux only sees 2 (hdi & 
hdj). If I play around with the sata bios configuration (change from 
auto to enhanced mode) Linux sees hde and hdf.

I have tried kernel versions 2.4.27 and 2.4.28-pre1. I have also 
downloaded the relevant Highpoints driver and this works. However it 
uses the scsi interface which is not what I want.

Any ideas? Thanks.




-- 
Ian Leonard

Please ignore spelling and punctuation - I did.

Re: Highpoint & ide probing problem

[Ryan Bourgeois]

Alright, you don't have to worry about RAID anyway, so you're set 
there.    I assume the onboard controller is handled by the PIIXn 
(CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX) driver since it's standard Intel.  The Highpoint 
controller will definately be handled by the HPT36X/37X driver 
(CONFIG_BLK_DEV_HPT366).

If your kernel is not configured with support for the above, you need to 
do so, especially the HPT driver, as generic support is unlikely to work 
properly with the Highpoint (didn't work right for my Highpoint).

Apparently Itox does not provide the manual for this mobo via their 
website, so I can't help you with BIOS settings that may be proprietary 
to that board.  None of the boards I've experience with mention "auto" 
or "enhanced mode" for SATA controllers, so I don't know what these 
settings imply for software configuration.

If it is the case that your kernel is configured as per above, then this 
definately needs to be CC'd to the list (I've done so) for other 
suggestions, as at the moment I can't think of anything.  I know, I 
dried up quickly, but my brain is offline at the moment...

Sorry I couldn't be of more help, but hey, I tried  >8)

-ryan


Ian Leonard wrote:

> Ryan Bourgeois wrote:
>
>> Need more info.  What's the motherboard?  What's the SATA chip?  I'm 
>> confused as to what your configuration is supposed to look like.  You 
>> want four PATA drive plugged only into the PATA controller?  Are you 
>> saying you dno't want to use the SATA controller at all?
>
>
> Hi Ryan,
>
> The motherboard is an Itox G4C600-R. It has a sata chip (ICH5R) and
> an HPT370/372 onboard. This gives a total of 10 possible drives (4 
> standard PATA, 4 Highpoint PATA and 2 SATA).
>
> We do not want to use the SATA at all (at the moment). We want to use 
> the 4 HPT PATA drives. We do not want raid.
>
>
>
>> Also, your unlikely to find SATA drivers for your chipset in 2.4.27.  
>> Try a 2.6 kernel.  Modern SATA is provided via libata, which looks 
>> like SCSI and smells like SCSI.  Therefore, you'll find it under SCSI 
>> low-level drivers.  Consequently, your SATA drives WILL look like 
>> SCSI drives (sda, sdb, etc, etc...).
>
>
> We need the HPT pata (on hde, hdf, hdg & hdh) because of software 
> compatibility.
>
> The problem is that the Linux driver only sees one of the HPT channels 
> (so only two disks). Which channel this is depends on how the SATA is
> configured in the bios (which we initially set to off, since we don't 
> want to use it).
>
>
>> In the possible case that your SATA chipset is HPT 3xx based (I have 
>> one of these, the Highpoint 1640 RAID controller), then that will 
>> look and play like a PATA controller.  Note that the "RAID" is 
>> software RAID, so driver support is not given for that sort of thing 
>> in Linux.  This is with a number fo very good reasons.  Use Linux's 
>> RAID solution.  You can also find that in the kernel, and you can 
>> find a howto on the internet.  When in doubt, Google!
>>
>> Hope this help some.
>
>
> Thanks.
>

Re: Highpoint & ide probing problem

[Ian Leonard]

Ryan Bourgeois wrote:
> Alright, you don't have to worry about RAID anyway, so you're set 
> there.    I assume the onboard controller is handled by the PIIXn 
> (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX) driver since it's standard Intel.  The Highpoint 

Yes I have.

> controller will definately be handled by the HPT36X/37X driver 
> (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_HPT366).
> If your kernel is not configured with support for the above, you need to 
> do so, especially the HPT driver, as generic support is unlikely to work 
> properly with the Highpoint (didn't work right for my Highpoint).
> 
> Apparently Itox does not provide the manual for this mobo via their 
> website, so I can't help you with BIOS settings that may be proprietary 
> to that board.  None of the boards I've experience with mention "auto" 
> or "enhanced mode" for SATA controllers, so I don't know what these 
> settings imply for software configuration.

Strange, all the ones I have see do. That doesn't mean I know what they 
do - I have never seen a full description. However it has something to 
do with the relationship with the PATA and SATA drives. I would guess 
that an old driver may only handle 4 drives (not the full compliment of 
8, or in my case 10) so the bios specifies which ones you want to use. 
An enhanced driver allows all.

It would appear the Highpoint driver isn't getting this right.

> If it is the case that your kernel is configured as per above, then this 
> definately needs to be CC'd to the list (I've done so) for other 
> suggestions, as at the moment I can't think of anything.  I know, I 
> dried up quickly, but my brain is offline at the moment...
> 
> Sorry I couldn't be of more help, but hey, I tried  >8)

Indeed you did, and I thank you for that. Do you think I should copy 
this to the main list?



-- 
Ian Leonard

Please ignore spelling and punctuation - I did.