# Promise Fasttrack 100 IDE Raid controller supported?

## TobiWan

Hello everybody,

I am really willing to give Gentoo a try and decommission my SuSE 8.0 distribution as I grow impatient with its upgrade possibilities.

One thing which I need to know though is if Gentoo offers kernel modules or kernel support for Promise's IDE Raid controllers, especially an older model I am using: Fasttrak 100. I guess the answer will be no since the driver code is not open source and I had to go through some trouble to get it running with SuSE. Promise offers kernel modules for three distributions only and Gentoo is not one of them. But perhaps you can surprise me?  :Wink: 

thanks for your effort,

Tobias

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## TobiWan

I just read something about probing for Promise hardware RAID in the installing manual. Does that mean my old Fasttrak 100 is supported and I can keep my bootable Windows 98SE partition which is residing on the disk array? It would be great to just get rid of SuSE, keep Windows 98 and install Gentoo without making me reinstall Windows. That always gives me the creeps because it takes a whole day to get that running again with all the f***ing MS updates and custom programs...

Of course that would implicate that the Gentoo kernel recognizes the RAID partitions I configured with SuSE+Promise's driver...

thanks,

Tobias

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## TobiWan

Hi there again,

I've tried to identify my problem in older threads but I'm not exactly sure whether I'm going into the right direction since

a) there are a great deal of different Promise IDE RAID controllers in the wild

b) it seems to depend on the proper kernel version by a great deal

So, what additional information do you need to help me, apart the fact that I'm using a Promise Fasttrak 100? What's that other revision (?) number people keep adding to their Promise equipment? Where can I find information about mine? I am a "little" confused here...

thanks again in advance,

Tobias

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## col

yes  you need to load the ataraid & pdcraid modules or if you want to boot from it you need them compiled into your kernel or create an initrd. You can also use the promise partitial open source drivers if you want to take advantage of the RAID bios.

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## TobiWan

Hi col,

thanks for your answer. But as I'm really not familiar with all these kernel issues you need to explain it to me a little bit more  :Wink: 

 *Quote:*   

> you need to load the ataraid & pdcraid modules

 

This is described in the installation manual, right? http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml

 *Quote:*   

> if you want to boot from it you need them compiled into your kernel

 

How and when would I do this in the installation proces of Gentoo?

Maybe there already exists a howto?

 *Quote:*   

> create an initrd

 

I'm not familiar with "initrd". All I know is that a kernel image is loaded into a ramdisk while booting, is that right? How do I create one and when (in the context of a fresh Gentoo installation)?

 *Quote:*   

> You can also use the promise partitial open source drivers if you want to take advantage of the RAID bios

 

I guess this is what I want then. I already have a partition on a RAID0 array which I don't want to lose. Using the methods above would make me lose them? How do I use that partially open source driver? And when?

Well I guess you see what my problem is... I'm really a "n00b" and I am looking for a detailed step-by-step installation guide like this http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml but involving the use of my Promise IDE RAID controller, without losing other partitions...

thanks,

Tobias

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## Crg

 *col wrote:*   

> yes  you need to load the ataraid & pdcraid modules or if you want to boot from it you need them compiled into your kernel or create an initrd. You can also use the promise partitial open source drivers if you want to take advantage of the RAID bios.

 

Unless I'm missing something (and I just checked the promise website), there is a closed source version on the driver (supported on redhat, suse, etc).

and an open source version which is version 0.03b and barely works, ie no error handling etc.

What partial open source driver are you talking about?

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## Garbz

not sure if this is correct but isn't there a pdc driver in the kernel ?

I've allways had onboard raid from promise on my motherboards, aren't they are very similar bios?  I mean the motherboard is a cut down fasttrak is it not?

I think i may have read somewhere a while back that the pdc driver should work for either,  also towards to bottom of the same menu in the kernel where the pdc driver is i'm sure i saw fasttrak !

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## Crg

 *Garbz wrote:*   

> 
> 
> not sure if this is correct but isn't there a pdc driver in the kernel ?
> 
> 

 

The driver in the kernel is the open source driver.

 *Garbz wrote:*   

> 
> 
> I've allways had onboard raid from promise on my motherboards, aren't they are very similar bios?  I mean the motherboard is a cut down fasttrak is it not?
> 
> 

 

The motherboard "onboard raid" is the same as the fasttrack card.

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## col

 *TobiWan wrote:*   

> Hi col,
> 
> thanks for your answer. But as I'm really not familiar with all these kernel issues you need to explain it to me a little bit more 
> 
>  *Quote:*   you need to load the ataraid & pdcraid modules 
> ...

 

ok when you install gentoo you will need to 

modprobe ataraid

modprobe pdcraid

Then when you get upto the stage of compiling your kernel add :

SUPPORT FOR IDE RAID CONTROLLERS

SUPPORT FOR PROMISE SOFTWARE RAID

do not ad the other promise support selections.

If you cant get this to work then you can use the promise partial opensource kernel modules which have the advantage of supporting hotswap etc.

wget http://www.promise.com/support/file/driver/2_relb25.tgz

& then compile it & load them

After you insmod them your hard disk will become /dev/sda

you will then need to make an initrd so that they load at boot time.

I have written a howto that will help you with this but its for the Highpoint controller. The procedure for the initrd is exactly the same for the promise modules.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=18894&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=

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