# new silicon image raid 0 driver? (replacement for siraid.o)

## Moled

read:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/8/1/154

his site is:

http://www.infowares.com/linux/

can anybody get it to work with any success?

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## Moled

```
Partition check:

 /dev/ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0: p1

 /dev/ide/host2/bus1/target0/lun0: p1

Medley RAID: Striped set 0 consists of 2 disks, total 68MB - disks: 21:00 22:00

 ataraid/d0: p1

Medley RAID: 1 active RAID set
```

\o/ \o/ \o/

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## taskara

any corruption?

what does hdparm -tT reveal?

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## Moled

ive only been using it for a few mins

but no corruption so far :\

hdparm won't work on /dev/ataraid etc

but other methods reveal transfers to be at just under 80mb/sec

whereas with software raid on the same discs, I was getting 110mb/sec, although this was on the intel controller not the simmage.

Individual disc hdparm:

/dev/hde:

 Timing buffered disk reads:  158 MB in  3.00 seconds =  52.67 MB/sec

so with 2 of them,  80 mb/sec isn't great

I've copied 3.2Gb across onto it so far, no problems

using software raid, it crashed out after if I was copying sets of files greater than ~600Mb in one go (ram cache usage shot upto 100% and on hitting 100 I got a hard lock every time) , whereas this is coping fine, tho bad performance  :Sad: 

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## raphae24

Hello,

can someone say to me, how I can get this driver running? 

How do I have to install this patch within gentoo 1.4 (rc4) ? 

Still once to repetition:

I'm using the A7N8X Deluxe mainboard - there are 2 attached harddisks at the sil 3112a, on which a NTFS windows xp partition is installed. 

I have gentoo version 1.4, releases candidate 4. 

So - if I boot the Gentoo CD - how to start or activate this patch by Thomas Horsten? 

Do I have to enter again with "smp doataraid doraid doscsi"? 

Thank you for your help. 

Greetings, Raphael

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## raphae24

Hi Moled,

especially you:

how did you get running this new driver ?

Which linux distribution are you using ?

Do I have to use an already installed linux system or can I include this new driver in the installations routines of distributions of SuSE, Mandrake or gentoo ?

Thanks in advance ...

Raphael

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## raphae24

hey,

today this is the 5th August ... Shouldn't be today the release of gentoo 1.4 final ?

Greetings,

Raphael

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## Moled

raphael:

I got it off the linux kernel mailing list

I'm using gentoo

Yes it will work on any distro

Yes it will work on a system thats already running

The patch is easy to apply manually, it just adds 1 file and edits about a line in 3 other files

The bad performance is due to the crappy silimage controller, I was getting the 110mb/sec off the intel ich5r

:/

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## taskara

moled, what patch command did u use, and what kernel did u patch against? ac-sources? or vanilla?

did u just run 

```
patch -p0 < medleyraid_testrelease_02.patch
```

 from /usr/src?

it asks me what file to patch cause there's an error on line 4..

if u could post the code u used to patch the kernel that would be much appreciated!

cheers!

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## Moled

I just looked thru the diff and did it manually

any specific kernel you want it made for?

:/

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## luckless

I applied the patch to a 2.4.21 kernel and compiled it in. I had to manually apply the change to /drivers/ide.Config.in but the rest applied cleanly. The raid 0 array was then successfully detected. Unfortunately it now looks like one of the new SATA drives is a dud. I get ...

hde: dma_timer_expiry: dma status ==0x21

hde: timeout waiting for DMA

hde: timeout waiting for DMA

hde: ststus error: status=0x58 {DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest}

...etc..

ide2: reset phy, status=0x00000113, siimage_reset

hde: drive not ready for command

...

This is followed by a rock solid lockup. This happens regardless of whether the drive is in a raid array or not so I guess that it'll have to be RMA'ed tomorrow.

Anyway, HTH.

1x seagate baracuda PATA 120

2x seagate baracuda SATA 120's

A7N8x deluxe

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## Moled

have you tried using the latest ac sources which has an updated siimage module?

as in 1.06 vs 1.02 I *think*

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## taskara

hmmm... but why go back to ac-sources?

aren't we trying to patch a newer different driver ?

*confused*

and I want to patch it for say vanilla 2.4.21 or 2.4.22-rc1 or something

I've never patched something against a kernel b4.. so some pointers would be helpful..

ta

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## Baad3r

Can't wait to see his patch for 2.6   :Very Happy: 

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## taskara

would love to know how to patch even for 2.4!..

can anyone help a fool like me?

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## Moled

open it up, and you will see that he did it against 2.4.22-pre9

since it looks for specific line numbers it won't work

first file is Documentation/Configure.help ie the help when you are selecting kernel options in make menuconfig etc

search for "If you choose to compile this as a module, the module will be called hptraid.o." then stick then next chunk of text with all the +++s in front of it, removing the ++s of course

next file is /drivers/ide/Config.in

he in fact deletes all the old stuff but just add after

"dep_tristate '   Silicon Image Medley software RAID (EXPERIMENTAL)' CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_SII $CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE $CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL $CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID"

add

"dep_tristate '   Medley software RAID (CMD/Silicon Image)' CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_MEDLEY $CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDE $CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL $CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID"

then /drivers/ide/raid/Makefile

after "obj-$(CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_SII)	+= silraid.o"

add "obj-$(CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_MEDLEY)	+= medley.o"

final thing: create a new file: /drivers/ide/raid/medley.c

and add everything downto

+module_init(medley_init);

+module_exit(medley_exit);

+MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");

into that new file, once done reconfig your kernel, and you should be set

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## gmichels

Moled:

When you compiled the kernel with this new medley support, did you also left this option enabled?

```
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SIIMAGE=y
```

Or you just enabled this one:

```
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_MEDLEY=y
```

and left the upper one disabled?

I keep getting an unknown partition error when trying to use this new driver =/

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## Moled

I left the upper one disabled, in fact I deleted it entirely as the patch was supposed to do

and yes I just used the lower one

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## gmichels

Are you sure? Aren't you confusing CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_SII with CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SIIMAGE?

CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SIIMAGE is Silicon Image chipset support

CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_SII is Silicon Image Medley software RAID (EXPERIMENTAL)

I tried leaving the upper one disabled and the siimage device is not even recognized. With it enabled, I can see it in the dmesg output, but I get that partition table error.

Could you check which config you used?

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## asv

I've not been able to install gentoo in my sata raid 0 machine because silraid won't find my array.  Will this driver fix this? Has anyone had success with this patch? I guess I will have to make a custom installer CD to get his working during the instalation?

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## Moled

 *Drago wrote:*   

> Are you sure? Aren't you confusing CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_SII with CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SIIMAGE?
> 
> CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SIIMAGE is Silicon Image chipset support
> 
> CONFIG_BLK_DEV_ATARAID_SII is Silicon Image Medley software RAID (EXPERIMENTAL)
> ...

 

ah misread your post

yes of course you need the siimage driver

but leave out the OLD raid one, which is broken and try the newer one

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## gmichels

I couldn't get it to work. As I said, it complaints about unknown partition types.

Anyway I managed to get the silraid driver to work, but only when compiled into the kernel, not as a module. I created a livecd with support for it and it does work. I get speeds of around 70Mb/s in the raid array.

The weird thing is that if I enable the vesa framebuffer, the drives performance go down to pio modes. With the 80x25 display, everything is fine anI get udma5.

Another problem is an annoying printk message I get while using the drives. Looks like it's an irq conflict as the raid controller shares the irq with my usb controller. I tried enabling acpi but no joy.

So I prefer to wait a bit more until there's better support for this hardware. Until then, I'm stuck in Windows =/

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## boltronics

I too have had great success with the medley kernel patch. It patches a 2.4.22 kernel fine, so A7N8X Deluxe users should be able to get practically all features supported in a kernel simultaneously for once.

It should be noted that I too could never get the silraid to detect my array. I've been using the medley driver compiled in for well over a week now, with no data corruption.   :Very Happy: 

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## raphae24

Hi,

as linux newbie I don't know how to use this medley driver !

My harddisks are empty and configured as raid stripping.

I downloaded the 2 CDs of gentoo 1.4.

So, can someone explain to me, how to include this medley driver in the process of a new gentoo installation ?

How do I start the medley driver ?

Which commands do I have to use ?

Many Greetings,

Raphael

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## raphae24

hi!

I also used commands like smp "doataraid doraid doscsi", but I didn't saw the raid array too. 

So could you please help me to install the medley driver ?

Greetings,

Raphael

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## boltronics

I cheated. I'm sure I could have made a special hacked version of the Gentoo Live CD, but I took the easy way out - I used a spare IDE hard disk.

I installed a minimal version of Gentoo on that, and used it to test different kernels and patches out to get the RAID0 array working. Once I could see it, I just did a normal install from there (as opposed to from the Live CD). Of course, I had to copy the stage tarballs across to my hard disk first.

It seems no matter which way you go about it, it's going to take a while to get working. Hopefully the driver will be included as an extra module on a Live CD soon.

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## boltronics

For more information on applying the patch, visit the post:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=78767

As mentioned before, grab the patch from:

http://www.infowares.com/linux/

It seems to apply on any recent 2.4 kernel.

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## gmichels

I got my system running with this:

I created a custom livecd so I could install gentoo on my system (as I didn't have a spare drive)

I used ac-sources and the plain silraid driver and it detected my array just fine. For my surprise, when I finished my install and rebooted the machine without the livecd, the silraid module wouldn't detect my array anymore.

After several tries, I decided to give the medley driver a try and it worked in the first time. It's working fine with decent performance (90mb/s for the array, 48mb/s each single drive). I am using gss-sources.

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## taskara

hey,

unfortunately, the current set of live cds do NOT support the silicon image raid array.

u coudl however, make your own custom live cd, with that medley driver, and that should work.

but u need a working linux system to make the custom disk,

and u need to know how to install the medley driver - unfortunately it's something I have not been able to do myself... so I can't help you there  :Sad: 

but people HAVE installed it with promising results... so see if u can find someone who can help you  :Very Happy: 

good luck! let us know how you go!!

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