SiI 3114 and sata_sil

SiI 3114 and sata_sil

[Florin Andrei]

(I'm not subscribed to linux-ide)

I've two almost identical systems (slightly different CPUs) that use SiI 
3114 for SATA and RAID.

One of them was installed a while ago with Fedora Core 5 (kernel 
2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp) and whoever installed it was able to turn on 
hardware RAID.

The other was installed with CentOS 4.4 (kernel 2.6.9-42.0.8.ELsmp) by 
myself. I tried many different things, but I couldn't activate RAID. The 
installer was always seeing two separate drives instead of one RAID volume.

Is this caused by the sata_sil driver? Is the version used by CentOS too 
old to support RAID?

BTW, on Fedora 5, how do I monitor the status of the RAID arrays? There 
doesn't seem to be anything in /proc to provide that info.

Thanks,

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/

Re: SiI 3114 and sata_sil

[Jeff Garzik]

Florin Andrei wrote:
> (I'm not subscribed to linux-ide)
> 
> I've two almost identical systems (slightly different CPUs) that use SiI 
> 3114 for SATA and RAID.
> 
> One of them was installed a while ago with Fedora Core 5 (kernel 
> 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp) and whoever installed it was able to turn on 
> hardware RAID.

This chip does not support hardware RAID.  The capability simply isn't 
there in the silicon.

http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html#sii

	Jeff

Re: SiI 3114 and sata_sil

[Florin Andrei]

Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Florin Andrei wrote:
>> (I'm not subscribed to linux-ide)
>>
>> I've two almost identical systems (slightly different CPUs) that use 
>> SiI 3114 for SATA and RAID.
>>
>> One of them was installed a while ago with Fedora Core 5 (kernel 
>> 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp) and whoever installed it was able to turn on 
>> hardware RAID.
> 
> This chip does not support hardware RAID.  The capability simply isn't 
> there in the silicon.
> 
> http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html#sii

Wow! :-(

So that means that the FC5 system is not actually on RAID? Even though 
it seems so? (using /dev/dm-* for filesystem volumes)

# lspci | grep -i sata
03:05.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 
[SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
# df -m
Filesystem           1M-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/dm-6               125931      2999    116432   3% /
/dev/dm-1                   99        13        81  14% /boot
tmpfs                     1012         0      1012   0% /dev/shm
/dev/dm-2                 9917       151      9254   2% /tmp
/dev/dm-3                 9917       237      9168   3% /var
# lsmod | grep ata
sata_sil               13897  2
libata                 58321  1 sata_sil
scsi_mod              129641  3 sg,libata,sd_mod
# cat /etc/modprobe.conf | tail -n 1
alias scsi_hostadapter sata_sil

So in fact /dev/dm-* are just on one disk each (not RAID1), or what is 
going on here?

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/

Re: SiI 3114 and sata_sil

[Jeff Garzik]

Florin Andrei wrote:
> Jeff Garzik wrote:
>> Florin Andrei wrote:
>>> (I'm not subscribed to linux-ide)
>>>
>>> I've two almost identical systems (slightly different CPUs) that use 
>>> SiI 3114 for SATA and RAID.
>>>
>>> One of them was installed a while ago with Fedora Core 5 (kernel 
>>> 2.6.15-1.2054_FC5smp) and whoever installed it was able to turn on 
>>> hardware RAID.
>>
>> This chip does not support hardware RAID.  The capability simply isn't 
>> there in the silicon.
>>
>> http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html#sii
> 
> Wow! :-(
> 
> So that means that the FC5 system is not actually on RAID? Even though 
> it seems so? (using /dev/dm-* for filesystem volumes)
> 
> # lspci | grep -i sata
> 03:05.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 
> [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
> # df -m
> Filesystem           1M-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/dm-6               125931      2999    116432   3% /
> /dev/dm-1                   99        13        81  14% /boot
> tmpfs                     1012         0      1012   0% /dev/shm
> /dev/dm-2                 9917       151      9254   2% /tmp
> /dev/dm-3                 9917       237      9168   3% /var
> # lsmod | grep ata
> sata_sil               13897  2
> libata                 58321  1 sata_sil
> scsi_mod              129641  3 sg,libata,sd_mod
> # cat /etc/modprobe.conf | tail -n 1
> alias scsi_hostadapter sata_sil
> 
> So in fact /dev/dm-* are just on one disk each (not RAID1), or what is 
> going on here?

The's dmraid providing /software/ RAID as noted in 
http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html#dmraid

	Jeff

Re: SiI 3114 and sata_sil

[Robin H. Johnson]

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On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 02:27:58PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >So that means that the FC5 system is not actually on RAID? Even though 
> >it seems so? (using /dev/dm-* for filesystem volumes)
> >
> ># lspci | grep -i sata
> >03:05.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 
> >[SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
> ># df -m
> >Filesystem           1M-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
> >/dev/dm-6               125931      2999    116432   3% /
> >/dev/dm-1                   99        13        81  14% /boot
> >tmpfs                     1012         0      1012   0% /dev/shm
> >/dev/dm-2                 9917       151      9254   2% /tmp
> >/dev/dm-3                 9917       237      9168   3% /var
> ># lsmod | grep ata
> >sata_sil               13897  2
> >libata                 58321  1 sata_sil
> >scsi_mod              129641  3 sg,libata,sd_mod
> ># cat /etc/modprobe.conf | tail -n 1
> >alias scsi_hostadapter sata_sil
> >
> >So in fact /dev/dm-* are just on one disk each (not RAID1), or what is 
> >going on here?
> The's dmraid providing /software/ RAID as noted in 
> http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html#dmraid
No, that's not a correct assertion. We can only say that device-mapper
is being used somehow. It could be LVM, EVMS2, dmraid, or a few other
things.

Use dmsetup (info,ls,status,targets) as well as the sysfs block slave
entries on dm-* to figure it out from scratch. (or at a higher level,
try the LVM tools etc).

-- 
Robin Hugh Johnson
Gentoo Linux Developer
E-Mail     : robbat2@gentoo.org
GnuPG FP   : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED  F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85

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Re: SiI 3114 and sata_sil

[Jeff Garzik]

Robin H. Johnson wrote:
> No, that's not a correct assertion. We can only say that device-mapper
> is being used somehow. It could be LVM, EVMS2, dmraid, or a few other
> things.


When using the stock open source ATA drivers, of those DM-related actors 
only dmraid can claim support for Sil 3114 proprietary "hardware RAID" 
as the user would see it.

	Jeff