Hi to all,

I've just installed a PCI RAID ATA controller card equipped with a SiI680
chipset.
I use a Mandriva 2005 LE distro.
After defining a new RAID1 set from BIOS,(two maxtor hd, one for channel),
linux correctly manages the card with the siimage module and the two HDs
can be accessed as single ide devices (hdc and hde). However I cannot find
any RAID device under /dev as I expected.
Where am I wrong?
What device name have I to search for?

kernel version: 2.6.11-6mdk

log messages after booting:

SiI680: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:02:0f.0
PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 0000:02:0f.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 0000:00:1f.4
SiI680: chipset revision 2
SiI680: BASE CLOCK == 133
SiI680: 100%% native mode on irq 5
ide1: MMIO-DMA , BIOS settings: hdcio, hddio
ide2: MMIO-DMA , BIOS settings: hdeio, hdfio
hdc: Maxtor 6B120P0, ATA DISK drive
ide1 at 0xe080e480-0xe080e487,0xe080e48a on irq 5
hde: Maxtor 6B120P0, ATA DISK drive
ide2 at 0xe080e4c0-0xe080e4c7,0xe080e4ca on irq 5
hda: max request size: 1024KiB
hda: 320173056 sectors (163928 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=19929/255/63,
UDMA(100)
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 < p5 p6 >
hdc: max request size: 64KiB
hdc: 240121728 sectors (122942 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63,
UDMA(133)
/dev/ide/host1/bus0/target0/lun0: unable to read partition table
hde: max request size: 64KiB
hde: 240121728 sectors (122942 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63,
UDMA(133)
/dev/ide/host1/bus1/target0/lun0: unable to read partition table
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
md: md driver 0.90.1 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
TCP established hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 131072 bind 65536)
NET: Registered protocol family 1
BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 2 devices found
devfs_mk_dev: could not append to parent for md/0
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.

lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82815 815 Chipset Host Bridge and
Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82815 815 Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801BA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801BA IDE U100 (rev 02)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM SMBus (rev 02)
00:1f.4 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM USB (Hub #2) (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV28 [GeForce4 Ti 4200
AGP 8x] (rev a1)
02:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant CX22702 DVB-T 2k/8k (rev 03)
02:09.1 Multimedia controller: Conexant: Unknown device 8811 (rev 03)
02:0b.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6105 [Rhine-III] (rev
86)
02:0d.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 (rev 05)
02:0d.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Live! MIDI/Game Port (rev
05)
02:0f.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. (formerly CMD Technology
Inc) PCI0680 Ultra ATA-133 Host Controller (rev 02)


regards
Giampiero

Giampiero Gabbiani <giampiero_gabbiani@tin.it> did eloquently scribble:
> Hi to all,
>
> I've just installed a PCI RAID ATA controller card equipped with a SiI680
> chipset.
> I use a Mandriva 2005 LE distro.
> After defining a new RAID1 set from BIOS,(two maxtor hd, one for channel),
> linux correctly manages the card with the siimage module and the two HDs
> can be accessed as single ide devices (hdc and hde). However I cannot find
> any RAID device under /dev as I expected.
> Where am I wrong?
> What device name have I to search for?

I think the silicon image cards (and onboard) aren't true raid.
They're a softraid configuration, and 2.6 doesn't support those cards very
much...

You're better off using the linux kernel software (md) devices.
Then you get RAID *AND* the performance in kernel softraid is better than
softraid cards, (I think that's why they're not supported)

--
__________________________________________________ ____________________________
| spike1@freenet.co.uk | |
|Andrew Halliwell BSc(hons)| "The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't |
| in | suck is probably the day they start making |
| Computer science | vacuum cleaners" - Ernst Jan Plugge |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

spike1@freenet.co.uk wrote:

> Giampiero Gabbiani <giampiero_gabbiani@tin.it> did eloquently scribble:
>> Hi to all,
>>
>> I've just installed a PCI RAID ATA controller card equipped with a SiI680
>> chipset.
>> I use a Mandriva 2005 LE distro.
>> After defining a new RAID1 set from BIOS,(two maxtor hd, one for
>> channel), linux correctly manages the card with the siimage module and
>> the two HDs can be accessed as single ide devices (hdc and hde). However
>> I cannot find any RAID device under /dev as I expected.
>> Where am I wrong?
>> What device name have I to search for?
>
> I think the silicon image cards (and onboard) aren't true raid.
> They're a softraid configuration, and 2.6 doesn't support those cards very
> much...
>
> You're better off using the linux kernel software (md) devices.
> Then you get RAID *AND* the performance in kernel softraid is better than
> softraid cards, (I think that's why they're not supported)
>

You were right, after investigating in internet I found that SiI0680 is a
software raid chipset....

Anyway, after several attempts I succeeded in mounting the soft raid
partition with dmraid package.

Is there any test that I can do in order to measure the performance and
functionalities of this controller?

Regards
Giampiero

Giampiero Gabbiani <giampiero_gabbiani@tin.it> did eloquently scribble:
> You were right, after investigating in internet I found that SiI0680 is a
> software raid chipset....
>
> Anyway, after several attempts I succeeded in mounting the soft raid
> partition with dmraid package.
>
> Is there any test that I can do in order to measure the performance and
> functionalities of this controller?

Don't know...
There are some disk throughput tests, like bonnie++ to test access, read,
write and copy speeds but you'll just be testing the kernel's RAID code
rather than the controller (which is being used by the kernel as a simple
IDE). Only windows supports the raid part of the card fully, because the
manufacturers supplied the driver.

Testing windows running on the raid card vs linux using kernel RAID wouldn't
be a valid comparison because the test would be mainly windows v linux,
rather than card vs kernel in that situation...
Suppose a way to handle the comparison would be to install windows on the
RAID, run the tests, install it on the card in standard none-raid mode and
do the tests again, then do the same with linux using standard IDE and
kernel RAID... see the comparisons side by side...
--
__________________________________________________ ____________________________
| spike1@freenet.co.uk | "Are you pondering what I'm pondering Pinky?" |
|Andrew Halliwell BSc(hons)| |
| in | "I think so brain, but this time, you control |
| Computer Science | the Encounter suit, and I'll do the voice..." |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------