# Adaptec 2400A information

## Swell°

Hi, 

I'm using gs-sources, and i want to know what i have to build into kernel and modules to support this card?

Thanks!

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## taskara

isn't it a silicon image chipset?

or is it hardware raid controlled?

perhaps you can ask adaptec, although I'm sure I've seen someone using it around here.. search for adaptec 2400a

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## Swell°

Some people wrote on this forum that there card is working with linux, but the don't give the things to include in a 2.4 Kernel  :Sad: 

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## Crg

 *Swell° wrote:*   

> Some people wrote on this forum that there card is working with linux, but the don't give the things to include in a 2.4 Kernel 

 

Have you got i2o and Adaptec i2o RAID compiled in your kernel?

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## Swell°

yes it is compiled in, but when i try to boot it detects the card but it freeze...  :Sad: 

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## Crg

 *Swell° wrote:*   

> yes it is compiled in, but when i try to boot it detects the card but it freeze... 

 

Sounds nasty.  You could try asking on the LKML.

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## Swell°

The problem is, when i use the genkernel with everything it works,

but when i compile it with --menuconfig, it detects the card but the dpti that normally comes after doesn't appear...

BTW what is LKLM?  :Smile: 

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## taskara

linux kernel volume management isn't it?

for managing mount points over multiple drives..

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## Swell°

It stills doesn't work with LVM...

Here is an output of dmesg when it works:

```

Loading Adaptec I2O RAID: Version 2.4 Build 5

Detecting Adaptec I2O RAID controllers...

Adaptec I2O RAID controller 0 at f881b000 size=100000 irq=17

dpti: If you have a lot of devices this could take a few minutes.

dpti0: Reading the hardware resource table.

TID 008  Vendor: HIGHPOINT    Device: IDEhpt370    Rev: 00000001

TID 009  Vendor: HIGHPOINT    Device: IDEhpt370    Rev: 00000001

TID 010  Vendor: HIGHPOINT    Device: IDEhpt370    Rev: 00000001

TID 011  Vendor: HIGHPOINT    Device: IDEhpt370    Rev: 00000001

TID 523  Vendor: ADAPTEC      Device: RAID-5       Rev: 3A0L

scsi0 : Vendor: Adaptec  Model: 2400A            FW:3A0L

  Vendor: ADAPTEC   Model: RAID-5            Rev: 3A0L

  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 02

```

When it doesn't work

```

Loading Adaptec I2O RAID: Version 2.4 Build 5

Detecting Adaptec I2O RAID controllers...

Adaptec I2O RAID controller 0 at f881b000 size=100000 irq=11

```

it freezes here ....

any idea??? 

TIA!  :Smile: Last edited by Swell° on Tue Jan 27, 2004 4:17 pm; edited 1 time in total

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## taskara

taken out acpi and apic?

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## Swell°

I removed acpi from kernel, because the raid array or the controller goes offline sometimes, and i don't know what is this coming from...

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## taskara

hmmm.. well the two kernels configure it on different IRQ

2.4 detects it on irq 17, where as 2.6 detects it on irq 11

so perhaps you DO need acpi ?

or perhaps you need to turn acpi OFF in the bios

or perhaps set the IRQ assignments to manual instead of auto?

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## Swell°

Ok, i'll try that tomorrow!

Thx!

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## taskara

let us know how you go..

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## Swell°

With ACPI it works!  :Smile: 

Just need to build into kernel ACPI and Adaptec I2O Raid Support!

The question now is how can i check my disk array with that?

Adaptec is only giving binaries tools for redhat9  :Sad: 

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## Swell°

well in facts it half works...

it works for a time and then the raid array can't be accessed anymore   :Crying or Very sad: 

when it works if i do

```

#cat /proc/scsi/dpt_i2o/0

Adaptec I2O RAID Driver Version: 2.4 Build 5

Vendor: Adaptec  Model: 2400A            FW:3A0L

SCSI Host=scsi0  Control Node=/dev/dpti0  irq=17

        post fifo size  = 255

        reply fifo size = 255

        sg table size   = 56

Devices:

        ADAPTEC RAID-5           Rev: 3A0L

        TID=523, (Channel=0, Target=0, Lun=0)  (online)

```

when it doesn't work anymore:

```

#cat /proc/scsi/dpt_i2o/0

Adaptec I2O RAID Driver Version: 2.4 Build 5

Vendor: Adaptec  Model: 2400A            FW:3A0L

SCSI Host=scsi0  Control Node=/dev/dpti0  irq=17

        post fifo size  = 255

        reply fifo size = 255

        sg table size   = 56

Devices:

        ADAPTEC RAID-5           Rev: 3A0L

        TID=523, (Channel=0, Target=0, Lun=0)  (offline)

```

I have removed the apm from the kernel...

I have no idea....

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## taskara

hmm I am not sure.. you could try loading the adaptec as a module and loading it?

perhaps contact adaptec and see what they say? sorry I can't think of much more to help  :Confused: 

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## EDDI

Exact that is the problem that prevents me from installing gentoo

on one server. When this server was bought, he ran windows;

Now he runs Redhat, only because of the fu... driver support from adaptec (binaries only for the management tool).

I can't recommend this controller for gentoo. 

If you have the money, purchase a 3ware 7506-4 or greater. 

It runs fine.

see http://edcc.dyndns.org/phpsysinfo/

so far from me

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## sunwukong

 *taskara wrote:*   

> hmm I am not sure.. you could try loading the adaptec as a module and loading it?
> 
> perhaps contact adaptec and see what they say? sorry I can't think of much more to help 

 

I have a 2400A (latest FW, same as the original poster) running under kernel gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.3-gentoo-r1 with the following settings:

ACPI [*]

APM [ ]

I2O [*] (all sub-options <*>)

Adaptec I2O driver <*> (this is drivers/scsi/dpt_i2o)

So far humming along fine.

Note: avoid vanilla kernel 2.6.4 -- AFAICT the developers are having a hard time porting this driver to the new DMA model, i.e., the driver's broken in 2.6.4

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## haven

For anyone else who didnt spot this straight away you sometimes need to uncheck the "Select only drivers expected to compile cleanly* option, in Code maturity level options, for the adapted i2o driver to show. This is certainly the case in gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.5sr

A quick question if I may, I've just bought a 2400A RAID card and I'm not sure which device I am supposed to be mounting from. Having looked through all the device files there are multiple options that I could choose i.e.

/dev/sd/c1b0t0u0p(1-4)

/dev/rd//c0d0p(1-4)

/dev/scsi/host1/bus0/target0/lun0 ...

/dev/sda(1-4)

So many options and no since they all mount fine I'm not sure which I should be using - also some confusion when booting from the 2004.1 install cd. The files in /dev/ seem to change once you chroot into your new system. I'm just wondering why this is but the main question is which device should I be using to refer to the Adaptec 2400A since there are multiple options.

Thanks in advance.

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## haven

Answered my own question in the end - used /dev/sda for mountings.

Also tried  a few other kernels before resorting to the previous posters advice and running 2.6.3. Kernels I tried that do NOT work with this driver are:

linux-2.6.5-aa5

linux-2.6.7-rc2

linux-2.6.5-gentoo

Although 2.6.3-rc2 works fine I get horribly hdparm scores so I'm guessing it still needs some work ...

Here's my scores:

 *Quote:*   

> saratoga root # hdparm -Tt /dev/sda
> 
> /dev/sda:
> 
>  Timing buffer-cache reads:   912 MB in  2.00 seconds = 455.84 MB/sec
> ...

 

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