# Adaptec 2410SA SATA and aacraid driver

## PatG

I am attempting to install 2005.1 on the following

Dell Precision 530

2.2 GHz Xeon in HT mode

Adaptec 2410SA SATA RAID Card

2x Seagate drives in RAID1 configuration

Onboard SCSI turned off in BIOS

I have set up the RAID and completed the initial mirroring process. Booted the Gentoo 2005.1 CD many times and finally got a reasonable boot with

gentoo-nofb nodetect (screen blanks unless nofb is used, Autodetect does not work well at all and complains)

then

# modprobe aacraid - no errors, finds raid

# modprobe 3c509x - no errors

# dhcpcd eth0 - works fine

I was able to partition and set my file systems as follows

sda1 /boot ext3

sda2 swap swap

sda3 / ext3

sda4 extended

sda5 /opt reiserfs

sda6 /usr reiserfs

sda7 /var reiserfs

sda8 /home reiserfs

Everything is good up to this point.

Now when I go to start the tar extractions it will run for 15-20 minutes and then I get many screens of I/O errors. The log file shows:

aacraid: Host adapter reset request. SCSI Hang?

followed by I/O errors. At this point the file system journaling fails and the partitions are locked read only.

There are many posts on this particular card and other info on the internet but there is much conflicting information.  Interestingly enough the Adaptec card coomes with a bootable cd that is Linux with a 2.4.x kernel and it uses aacraid.  I booted this CD and mounted the /usr partition where I had downloaded portage.  I am able to run the tar extraction on the 20M portage download successfully.

So, I am thinking that something is broken in aacraid and Kernel 2.6.x.  I guess I could try to copy the snapshot to disk and then run the rest of the install from the Adaptec boot CD. I am worried though that if I compile the aacraid into the kernel (as I would tend to do) that I will not have a stable kernel due to this driver.

If I can't get this card working in short order I guess I will opt for a 3ware card but I would like to avoid the additional $300 for a new SATA RAID card.Last edited by PatG on Mon Aug 29, 2005 12:10 am; edited 3 times in total

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## buzzin

Hi,

I also have that card and an sata raid. I cant remember what live cd i used to start the install, but i can say that the system is stable with the driver included in linux-2.6.11-gentoo-r11

I would suggest trying some other live cd's or maybe use a knoppix cd to do the gentoo install.

Hope it helps a little. Let me know if there is any other info regarding my setup which may help your diagnosics

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## PatG

I found an old 2004.2 cd with a 2.4.x kernel. System hung on the snapshot tar extraction, no error messages, just a blinking cursor.  I am starting to think I have a bad card. I will try to install win2k or xp on this system and see if it fails as well.

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## buzzin

sounds like that might be the case..  Try a knoppix cd aswell, would be interesting to see what that does.

Let us know how you get on...

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## PatG

A trial WinXP install was extremely slow. I did not even let it finish as it was at over 5 hours installing. Should be about 30 minutes.

After doing a bit more reading and finding a huge thread on the kernel mailing archive I have disabled all write cache on the card and turned off the Xeon HT. The un-tar process of the Gentoo install seems to be progressing fine now, although a bit slowly.

My plan is to continue with the Gentoo 2005.1, take the latest aacraid code I can find and inject it into the gentoo kernel source before my compile.

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## PatG

Also,

Knoppix CD had similar results to trying to boot the 2005.1 CD with "gentoo". Screen goes blank withing a few seconds and never comes back.

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## PatG

Just for the record:

It seems that the Dell Precicion APIC and the 2410SA do not play well together.  I went into the BIOS and forced the 2410SA onto an unshared interrupt (IRQ11). I am compiling the kernel now.

Dell Precision 530 AAR-2410SA aacraid

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## buzzin

good to hear you found a solution.

Maybe a bios update from dell is in order?

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## PatG

I guess I spoke to soon.

I finished the kernel compile and went to make dinner. When I came back I was ready to install grub and move on with the install...but...the machine hung and then I got the dreaded

aacraid: Host adapter reset request. SCSI Hang?

Rebuilding the array now.

Computer and SATA card are both at the latest BIOS/firmware releases.

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## elestedt

I've had this problem as well - for me it went away when I bought a more powerfull PSU...

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