Eugenio Diaz wrote:

> Well, I finaly finished building my new machine (lots of tie wraps, cable
> routing, etc.), an Abit KR7A-RAID with dual ATA133 60GB maxtors on a stripe.
> But I just found that Linux do not support the HPT372 on board raid controller
> 
>>:<) Double Damn the assholes at High Point!!! I bought this board with the
>>
> impression that High Point was a Linux friendly company, since when I was doing
> my light pre-shopping research I saw a big prominent Linux Logo on their
> page!!!
> 
> Can Mandrake put pressure with Abit on High Point to release specs, or whatever
> is needed for the drivers to be merged into the kernel, and not those stupid
> binary drivers for old Linux distros ...
> 
> Do you guys know if it is posible to take the RH7.1 drivers they provide, and
> cram them (some how disabling the versioning of symbols) into an initrd to make
> a custom Cooker install discs?
> 
> BTW, this message was copied to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]", so if you reply,
> do a reply all, so that they can see how stupid they are ... my immediate
> reaction was to return the board, but since I invested so much time building
> the box nicely, I am just going to disable the raid controller, and install on
> the normal ATA100 channels.
> 
> THANKS HIGH POINT!!!!
> 
> =====
> ________________________
> Eugenio Diaz, BSEE/BSCE   
> Linux Engineer
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 
> __________________________________________________
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> 

Ummm actually,

Just make your windows RAID cover less than the whole disks, then use 
linux software RAID on the rest.  The HPT controller, like the Promise 
FasTrak and the CMD and a couple others are in fact software RAIDs 
(just a BIOS extension) and expressly designed to add RAID to windows, 
at a surcharge of $30 US or more for their fake hardware RAID controllers.

There is support in the kernel to READ the RAID sectors on the 
controller if you are dual-booting, but writing is a different story, 
since linux software RAID has equal or better performance and beaucoup 
flexibility (like RAID 4 and 5 as well as 0 and 1, and arbitrary 
physical extents on arbitrary physical volumes making logical volumes).

If you really want RAID drivers, there is a chance that the stuff at 
this site will compile for you....

http://people.redhat.com/arjanv/pdcraid/

And the Duke of URL was also taken in by the fake hardware, writing an 
article to show how to make a RH driver work for Other distros--just 
search his site.  I think that one is Promise specific.  You _really_ 
know it is software when there have to be different driver versions for 
UP and SMP.

There is of course the possibility of returning the hardware and finding 
something else.  There are two real RAIDs for IDE, one of them 
OS-Transparent, and you can find them at linux-ide.org.  This link mught 
also be of interest:

http://www.linux-ide.org/endorsements.html

ARCO makes the pure hardware RAID controller for IDE, and Promise has 
the SuperTrak, but I have not heard anything from any applications save 
one member of the Alaska Linux Users Group who reported success with 
Mandrake but didn't give details.

Civileme




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