Promise SX6000 controller

[Tom Glover]

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004, Freddie Cash wrote:

> > Before I go beat my head against the proverbial wall - again ....
>
> > Any tips on installing 5.2.1 using this controller? Any tricks to
> > making it bootable? In fact is it possible to make it bootable?

Interestingly I can install 5.2.1 just fine on a RAID 1 using the sx6000.
However it won't boot - just stops after the "Verifying DMI Pool Data"
prompt. I can however boot on floppy and it sees the sx6000 as pst0:
Then I can specify usb:pst0s1a as the boot device at the mountroot> prompt
at which time it boots off the sx6000. I wonder if I have a BIOS issue.

Anyone have any ideas?

>
> Last time I looked at the Promise cards, they weren't actually
> hardware RAID cards.  Instead, they were a hybrid software / hardware
> card that did most of the RAID work in the driver.  IOW, you had to
> load a kernel, load a driver, then mount the drive array in order to
> get the RAID array accessible.  This meant you couldn't put / (or at
> least /boot) onto the RAID array.
>
> There may be tricks to get around this but I didn't spend much time on
> it.  I just returned the Promise cards and replaced them with 3Ware
> Escalade cards which do real hardware RAID and let you put / onto the
> RAID array.

I believe the sx6000 is a hardware RAID solution.

>
> --
> Freddie Cash
> fcash-ml at sd73.bc.ca
>

--
Tom Glover