Re: IDE/Promise 20276 FastTrack RAID Doesn't work in 2.4.21, patchattached to fix

Steven Dake
2003-07-10T22:16:21Z

Even with special fasttrack feature enabled, my disk devices on the
PDC20276 is not found. There is code in pci-setup.c which blocks other
PDC controllers, why not the 20276? Is that code for some other
purpose, or orthagonal to the force option?

Thanks
-steve

Samuel Flory wrote:

> Chad Kitching wrote:
>
>> I don't know. That seemed to have changed the option from merely
>> mystifying to down right confusing. By that wording, does that
>> feature override it into being a plain IDE controller, or an IDE RAID
>> controller? The new name seems to imply the former, while the
>> mentions of ataraid suggest the latter.
>>
>> Despite the grammatical errors, pdc202xx.c's comments perhaps
>> describe it better.
>> * Linux kernel will misunderstand FastTrak ATA-RAID series as Ultra
>> * IDE Controller, UNLESS you enable "CONFIG_PDC202XX_FORCE"
>> * That's you can use FastTrak ATA-RAID controllers as IDE controllers.
>>
>>
>
> I stopped reading the comments as they made my brain hurt more than
> reading the ide driver code;-)
>
>> If this is true, may I suggest something more along the lines of:
>>
>> Ignore FastTrak BIOS and configure controller for RAID
>> CONFIG_PDC202XX_FORCE
>> Forces the driver to use the ATA-RAID capabilities, overriding the
>> BIOS configuration of the controller. Do not enable if you are
>> using Promise's binary module. This option is compatible with the
>> ataraid driver.
>>
>
> This is completely wrong in my experience. In many configs linux's
> ide driver will ignore the controller entirely without
> CONFIG_PDC202XX_FORCE. In these cases you can't use the disk as
> either ide disks, or ataraid disks. (Keep in mind you can access the
> raw disk even if ataraid is loaded.) This seems to be true of the
> enbedded promise controllers found on intel and tyan boards. A few
> newer intel boards will allow you to toggle between ataraid, and ide
> modes in the bios. In this case you don't need CONFIG_PDC202XX_FORCE
> to see the drives.
>
>>
>> If the Linux driver has the same limitation in regards to using
>> CD-ROM drives on the controller while it's in RAID mode as the
>> Windows drivers do, it may be useful to mention the fact that the
>> option is incompatible with CD-ROM drives attached to the controller.
>>
>> Of course, maybe it means the complete opposite, and I'm reading
>> everything wrong, in which case, there are some comments you may want
>> to fix, too.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Samuel Flory
>> Sent: July 10, 2003 4:11 PM
>> Subject: Re: IDE/Promise 20276 FastTrack RAID Doesn't work in 2.4.21,
>> patchattached to fix
>>
>>
>> Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Do you have "Special FastTrak Feature" enabled?
>>>
>>
>>
>> Can we change the option to something that makes sense. I get the
>> feeling no one understands what it does at 1st glance. This is the
>> 2nd time I've seen a patch like this.
>>
>
>