Promise SATA driver

Promise SATA driver

[Andrew Walrond]

I can't find any readme in the Documentation folder about this, and I remember 
the original 'promise drivers goes gpl' thread degenerating into a license 
discussion.

I've got a 378 s150 tx chipset with their fasttrak raid bios. How should I 
configure the drives to use with the 2.6.3 kernel promise SATA driver? Can I 
configure them as a raid array?

TIA

Andrew Walrond

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Jeff Garzik]

Andrew Walrond wrote:
> I've got a 378 s150 tx chipset with their fasttrak raid bios. How should I 
> configure the drives to use with the 2.6.3 kernel promise SATA driver? Can I 
> configure them as a raid array?

The 2.6.3 sata_promise driver ignores any RAID configuration you set up, 
and directly talks to the drives.

	Jeff

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Pekka Pietikainen]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 10:21:23AM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Andrew Walrond wrote:
> >I've got a 378 s150 tx chipset with their fasttrak raid bios. How should I 
> >configure the drives to use with the 2.6.3 kernel promise SATA driver? Can 
> >I configure them as a raid array?
> 
> The 2.6.3 sata_promise driver ignores any RAID configuration you set up, 
> and directly talks to the drives.
To boot off one you might have to setup a RAID configuration in the
card BIOS though (Which is why I have a single drive configured as a raid0 :-) )

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Jeff Garzik]

Pekka Pietikainen wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 10:21:23AM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
>>Andrew Walrond wrote:
>>
>>>I've got a 378 s150 tx chipset with their fasttrak raid bios. How should I 
>>>configure the drives to use with the 2.6.3 kernel promise SATA driver? Can 
>>>I configure them as a raid array?
>>
>>The 2.6.3 sata_promise driver ignores any RAID configuration you set up, 
>>and directly talks to the drives.
> 
> To boot off one you might have to setup a RAID configuration in the
> card BIOS though (Which is why I have a single drive configured as a raid0 :-) )


Hum, the BIOS works fine here with no arrays defined...

	Jeff

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Andrew Walrond]

I take it the software raid thing wasn't part of the gpl'ed driver, and isn't 
something that is likely to happen?

Andrew Walrond

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Jeff Garzik]

Andrew Walrond wrote:
> I take it the software raid thing wasn't part of the gpl'ed driver, and isn't 
> something that is likely to happen?


In 2.4, RAID0 and RAID1 are supported via the pdcraid driver.

In 2.6, Promise software RAID support does not exist.  In conversations 
with Promise, we all agreed to encourage and support the standard Linux 
RAID, md.

	Jeff

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Henrik Gustafsson]

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:47:36 -0500, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> wrote:

> Andrew Walrond wrote:
>> I take it the software raid thing wasn't part of the gpl'ed driver, and 
>> isn't something that is likely to happen?
>
>
> In 2.4, RAID0 and RAID1 are supported via the pdcraid driver.
>
> In 2.6, Promise software RAID support does not exist.  In conversations 
> with Promise, we all agreed to encourage and support the standard Linux 
> RAID, md.
>
> 	Jeff

Does that apply to the FastTrack S150 SX4 aswell? The hardware XOR-engine 
will not be used?
What about the onboard cache?

// Henrik Gustafsson

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Jeff Garzik]

Henrik Gustafsson wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:47:36 -0500, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> wrote:
> 
>> Andrew Walrond wrote:
>>
>>> I take it the software raid thing wasn't part of the gpl'ed driver, 
>>> and isn't something that is likely to happen?
>>
>>
>>
>> In 2.4, RAID0 and RAID1 are supported via the pdcraid driver.
>>
>> In 2.6, Promise software RAID support does not exist.  In 
>> conversations with Promise, we all agreed to encourage and support the 
>> standard Linux RAID, md.
>>
>>     Jeff
> 
> 
> Does that apply to the FastTrack S150 SX4 aswell? The hardware 
> XOR-engine will not be used?
> What about the onboard cache?


I'm glad you asked.

The SX4 is a very different story.  The hardware XOR engine and on-board 
cache are not currently used, but they will be in the future.

For the TX series, there is no on-board cache, so hardware XOR engine 
isn't very useful.  For the SX series, it is very useful.

Promise did some neat stuff with the SX4...  so neat it takes some 
thinking to figure out how to best implement it in Linux :)

	Jeff

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Henrik Gustafsson]

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 12:10:31 -0500, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> wrote:

> Henrik Gustafsson wrote:
>> On Tue, 24 Feb 2004 11:47:36 -0500, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Andrew Walrond wrote:
>>>
>>>> I take it the software raid thing wasn't part of the gpl'ed driver, 
>>>> and isn't something that is likely to happen?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> In 2.4, RAID0 and RAID1 are supported via the pdcraid driver.
>>>
>>> In 2.6, Promise software RAID support does not exist.  In 
>>> conversations with Promise, we all agreed to encourage and support the 
>>> standard Linux RAID, md.
>>>
>>>     Jeff
>>
>>
>> Does that apply to the FastTrack S150 SX4 aswell? The hardware 
>> XOR-engine will not be used?
>> What about the onboard cache?
>
>
> I'm glad you asked.
>
> The SX4 is a very different story.  The hardware XOR engine and on-board 
> cache are not currently used, but they will be in the future.
>
> For the TX series, there is no on-board cache, so hardware XOR engine 
> isn't very useful.  For the SX series, it is very useful.
>
> Promise did some neat stuff with the SX4...  so neat it takes some 
> thinking to figure out how to best implement it in Linux :)
>
> 	Jeff
>

I'm glad for that particular response :)

I happen to have such a card in a computer here. Right now it's not used
for anything in particular (waiting for things to stabilising a bit) so
I can test out patches without worrying about any data on it, so feel
free to suggest things to try.

Is there any active development done on it?

My current working conditions (and lack of specs for the card) prevents me
 from doing much work on it myself atm, but is there perhaps another way of
following the development on that part a bit more closely?

I have done my (small, but still... :) ) share of driver development and
low-level coding (company I work for makes me write code for their embedded
devices and sometimes drivers for the PC-interfaces) so I might just be
able to pitch in with an idea or two.

// Henrik Gustafsson

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Jeff Garzik]

Henrik Gustafsson wrote:
> I happen to have such a card in a computer here. Right now it's not used
> for anything in particular (waiting for things to stabilising a bit) so
> I can test out patches without worrying about any data on it, so feel
> free to suggest things to try.
> 
> Is there any active development done on it?

Well, the basic SX4 SATA driver is pretty much done.  There is one 
bugfix I need to merge for PCI-X, but that's it.

Unfortunately, it is a bit slower than average since every request must 
bounce through RAM first, with no queueing.

Using the on-board DIMM as a write-through cache would boost performance 
significantly.


> My current working conditions (and lack of specs for the card) prevents me
> from doing much work on it myself atm, but is there perhaps another way of
> following the development on that part a bit more closely?
> 
> I have done my (small, but still... :) ) share of driver development and
> low-level coding (company I work for makes me write code for their embedded
> devices and sometimes drivers for the PC-interfaces) so I might just be
> able to pitch in with an idea or two.

Well, the specs are under NDA but are available from Promise.

However...  if you want to tackle creating the write-through cache, that 
shouldn't require any specs at all.  If you are knowledgeable enough to 
create generic write-through cache code for an ATA drive, that's 
sufficient :)

	Jeff

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Miquel van Smoorenburg]

In article <403B8028.1060700@pobox.com>,
Jeff Garzik  <jgarzik@pobox.com> wrote:
>Andrew Walrond wrote:
>> I take it the software raid thing wasn't part of the gpl'ed driver, and isn't 
>> something that is likely to happen?
>
>
>In 2.4, RAID0 and RAID1 are supported via the pdcraid driver.

I looked at those drivers, but they don't support error recovery
in RAID1 mode of any kind. It's just "read from one drive,
write to both" but if one disk goes south you're SOL.

Just FYI ;)

Mike.

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> writes:

> In 2.6, Promise software RAID support does not exist.  In
> conversations with Promise, we all agreed to encourage and support
> the standard Linux RAID, md.

Does this mean a dual-boot Linux/Windows system cannot use a Promise
RAID?

 - Pat

Re: Promise SATA driver

[Jeff Garzik]

Patrick J. LoPresti wrote:
> Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>In 2.6, Promise software RAID support does not exist.  In
>>conversations with Promise, we all agreed to encourage and support
>>the standard Linux RAID, md.
> 
> 
> Does this mean a dual-boot Linux/Windows system cannot use a Promise
> RAID?


In 2.4, you can use pdcraid driver.

In 2.6, correct, there is no Promise RAID driver.

	Jeff

Re: promise SATA driver

[David van Hoose]

Manuel Sabban wrote:
> I know some people hove spoken about this several months ago. I would
> just only know if some work has been achieved since. I've a pdc20376
> and I would know, if I could make it work with SATA drives. I am not
> interested by binary drivers provided on Promise's website.
> If there's something to test, I would be happy to do so.

The binary drivers on Promise's website are not for the ASIC solutions 
from what I've gathered. The supported controllers are:
pdc20318
pdc20375
pdc20618

The 376 isn't listed, and I can't get it to show up when I install any 
and all of their drivers. If I am wrong, then maybe someone could help 
me here. :-)

-David

promise SATA driver

[Manuel Sabban]

I know some people hove spoken about this several months ago. I would
just only know if some work has been achieved since. I've a pdc20376
and I would know, if I could make it work with SATA drives. I am not
interested by binary drivers provided on Promise's website.
If there's something to test, I would be happy to do so.
-- 
Love is an ancient force, one that served its purpose in its day but is no 
longer essential for the survival of the species.

  -- Bene Gesserit Axiom