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

Ruth Ivimey-Cook
2003-07-12T16:46:14Z

On Saturday 12 Jul 2003 5:14 pm, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
> I think you just need "pdc_ide=0,force" and "pdc_ide=0,noforce".
> No need to complicate things.
> Remember that ataraid is only software RAID driver and pdc202xx_new
> is a chipset driver.

I am not forgetting, but I don't like this idea of 'force' -- it instantly
raises the question 'force what' and then you're in the quagmire again.

Better to tell the kernel what you want and let the kernel worry about how to
make it happen.

So the "pdc_ide2=jbod" would be scanned and interpreted as a request to
activate ('force') the drive into IDE mode and not enable any ataraid (jbod
==> just disks),

while "pdc_ide3=promise" would let the drive state be, and make the kernel do
a "modprobe promise-ft" (or whatever it's called) to load the rest of the
driver, as is done for 'scsi-hostadapter'. [Would you ever have to force a
promise chip into promise-raid mode?].

Do you see what I mean?

If you prefer, the string could be "pdc=ide2:ide, ide3:ataraid".

> jbod/raid should be managed by ataraid driver not ide or pdc202xx_new.

I was using jbod as just that, not as meaning raid-0 or similar. Perhaps I
should have been clearer. So you've a choice of (just IDE), (RAID via
ataraid) and (RAID via Promise)

> And seriously, I don't care unless somebody ports ataraid to 2.5.
> [ Hint, hint! ;-) ]

Hint understood and I'll look, but I'm no kernel guru.

> > Should I think about coding this?
>
> No, think about porting ataraid and pdcraid to 2.5 first.

pdcraid == ataraid module for PDC?? Haven't looked at the src yet.

Regards,

Ruth

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