It seems RedHat 7.3 does have support for the chipset but only (non-RAID) support. Just like the RedHats before it.

When I setup RAID 0 in the HPT bios for instance, the installer sees 2 hard drives on their own channels instead of /dev/sd0 (one volume) like it should.

I have been able to install linux on RAID volume before on RedHat 7.0 – 7.2 but only with an installer boot disk that has a kernel with no support for the chipset in any form and a Linux DD disk (so that in expert mode I can load the driver). This way it shows up as /dev/sd0 in fdisk.

Each time I got these disks from HighPoint but they don’t have them for RedHat 7.3 yet, and I am having a hard time making a kernel for the installer disk that works with anaconda that is small enough to fit on a floppy.

I only know of 2 OS’s that come with native support for the RAID features of the HPT controllers, FreeBSD 4.4 and beyond and Windows xp. The rest come with only non-RAID support and treat it like a normal IDE controller or just plain don’t work right like SuSE 8.0 (or you have to do the song and dance for it to work).

Now this chipset has been around a while and most people like to run it with the RAID feature turned on. Seems to me that OS’s other than MS should have support for it by now.

And I don’t wanna hear about how it’s software RAID blah blah blah blah, and how Linux software RAID is better anyway. That is not the solution. The solution is to support the entire controller in all it capabilities. But I guess that’s too much to ask from a bunch of “volunteers”, so I’ll just be patient and use Windows some more since I don’t have to dink around with crap for IT TO WORK!

Sorry about that. In all seriousness if you know how to make 7.3 work with the RAID features of the controller turned on, I’m all ears!

SuSE support has just pointed me to rshaws link (which we know doesn't work)
Maybe we should get them to cross reference thier support tickets to speed things up...
mine is Ticket [20020430000002052]

it's not really SuSE's problem. you need to badger high point, it's their board/chipset.

you wouldn't contact SuSE for a driver for the latest-greatest video card, you would have to wait for the maufacturer or hope the xfree86 people support it in the next revision.

Yeah, technically you are right it's HighPoint's hardware they should be the ones to provide the drivers.

But how about we apply your logic to every piece of hardware?

How would linux boot at all and utilize any piece of hardware without having some support for it. Clearly SuSE and RedHat have an interest in supporting popular hardware and configurations (like HPT RAID option), especially since they have an insterest in winning market share away from Microsoft.

To use your own example, XFree86 does support NVidia cards currently out of the box. How stupid would it be for them not to since many people use NVidia adapters. It would be hard for casual linux users to install their favorite distro without having that support.

Now the installation process does not depend on OpenGL support so that lack of that feature in XFree86's driver does not keep people from installing their OS, even though to fully suport the card they have to afterwards install NVidia's very own driver.

It just so happens many of us use the RAID feature of our HPT adapters, and Highpoint has released open source drivers. We need the RAID support to install the OS <--- that is the OS Makers responsibility. It's high time the major Linux distro's incorporate those drivers into their installation with RAID support! If for no other reason, but to show us all it can be done and that we don't have to always turn to Windows to have a professional OS.

Amen esamatti.

Personally, I think HighPoint has done their part by releasing an open source driver. What more could you ask for? Is it also up to them to compile it and build a boot disk for every possible version of every linux distribution out there? I don't think so.

FYI, my case number with SuSE is: [20020513000002081]

i've built the driver against the 2.4.18.SuSE kernel, i have no way to test it, but if you want it, let me know.

I'll test it, I was planning on re-formatting my system today anyway.

Could you mail it to glen@operamail.com.


Cheers,

Glen.

I would love to give that a shot also. I guess I would have to build a boot disk around that kernel, launch the install, and then copy over the kernel to my installed system post-install? I am a bit of a newbie, so that may be tough for me, but I can probably figure it out somehow.

Thanks rshaw!!!

joshdaynard@netscape.net

I have an Abit KT7 RAID with the hpt370 controller, SBlive, ATI Radeon, Linksys NIC, USRobotics ProModem. I've tried fruitlessly to install RH 7.2 on the drive attached to the ATA/100 controller which was originally the only drive on this system. I finally installed a second drive on the slower standard controller and was able to run linux for a while (a few days) with the ata/100 disabled in the BIOS. Then, the computer started having trouble locking up as soon as log in to either kde or gnome. Finally the trouble extended to the command line as well in that the display became unreadable. (possible bad memory?) I've heard Linux gives your hardware a workout and problems invisible in Windoze manifest themselves in Linux.
It's nice to know that others have the same board - and the same problems. I've since given up trying to get it to run on this box and decided to begin my foray into the linux world on my old 200 MHz box. Now it doesn't recognize the Pheonix S3 graphics card on that system =P
If nothing else, it's been a learning experience. Albeit an extremely frusterating one.

mistere_here@hotmail.com

Hey da_real_mistere,

start smiling allready!
Slackware has the solution to your problem!
Slackware offers a bootdisk which is able to use the HPT370 controller. When you installed the system, the installer ask whether you want to use the kernel you booted with for the system. Say yes there, and you're done. The bootdisk is called ATA100 and can be found in the bootdisk1.44 dir on the slackware server.

How i know this? I'm running it myself! I've got a Abit KT7-Raid with a IBM 40gig attached to the Primary ATA100 controller. Rocks big time!

Good luck.

Ohw and bye the way, I wanted to compile another Kernel with HPT 370 support but kernel 2.4.18 only supports these:

[ ] HPT34X chipset support
[ ] HPT366 chipset support

is one of the above options compatible with the 370? Does anyone know that? I'll just compile the HPT 366 support in my kernel and give it a try. You'll hear from me again if it worked out.

CathodioN.

Thank you cathodion, I'm going to try that. I do want Linux on THIS system.

Call me stupid, but I don't know how to go about getting the kernals and drivers to do this. I am a newbie at linux and don't know how to run it that well.

Anyone tried cathodions suggestion yet? I am interested in hearing about how that goes. Not wanting to be a pessimist (cause I do want to believe that some Linux distribution can do this out of the box), but I am willing to bet that even slackware only has "100% native mode" support; which means it is treating the HPT controller as an ATA100 controller and not supporting the RAID feature.

It's evident from cathodions post that he hasn't yet tried it with the RAID feature turned on, since he specifically stated that he has an "IBM 40gig attached to the Primary ATA100 controller". It takes atleast 2 drives to utilize the raid feature of the HPT BIOS.

I hope I just read into that wrong, and I probably should give it a shot (not really a slackware fan hehe) myself to find out.

One way you can tell if it is using the RAID option of the controller is by the device path. For it to use the RAID feature it has to use a sort of SCSI emulation and the drive paths will be something like "/dev/sd0, sd1, etc..." and not "/dev/hde, hdg, etc" use by IDE devices.

In other words if it is working properly with RAID support, to the linux system the RAIDed drives will appear as a single SCSI device (or multiple SCSI devices depending on how many RAID volumes you have setup in the HPT BIOS.)

If you have tried slackware with 2 or more drives using the RAID option of the HPT BIOS please post your results. And if I do the same I will let you all know. Plus I'll let you know anything else I have discovered along this thorny path.

Hey esamatti,

I have indeed only 1 harddisk on the ATA100 controller. Maybe in the future i will buy another deskstar and create a raid construction... Anyway, my question is: Isn't the raid feature a hardware thing?? Why would you need drivers to support the raid feature if the controller takes care of that..? I'm not familiar with Raid nor SCSI systems so this could be a question.

I think i'll create the kernel today, so you'll here from me soon about what happend with the HPT366 support using a 370.

Greetzz,
CathodioN.

Well, I don't claim to be an expert, but I might be able to shed some light on the matter...

Even the so-called "real" RAID controllers are both a software (firmware) and a hardware solution. RAID has traditionally been implemented on SCSI controllers, and to tell you the truth it doesn't take much modification to the hardware at all. Mainly just a BIOS upgrade that implements the RAID features and a driver that will take advantage of the features. SCSI controllers normally (don't know of any that don't) have a processor to offload the I/O off the CPU, so this hardware can be used to also take care of the RAID stuff. By the time the system has anything to do with it, all it sees is the RAID volumes.

IDE on the other hand (being el-cheapo) traditionally doesn't include hardware to offload all the I/O besides the basic stuff. So RAID on an IDE controller is mainly implemented in the BIOS and Drivers, and it relies on the CPU of the computer to process the I/O and RAID stuff.

How all this happens I don't know, but basically some OS's end up looking at the finished RAID volumes as SCSI devices. Even Windows does this. Probably something the drivers have to do to enable support for the RAID features of the card. I guess this is why FreeBSD calls IDE-RAID controllers like the HPT "pseudo-RAID". Probably could be called "pseudo-SCSI" as well hehe.

Let me say this too even SCSI controllers have to have support (or drivers) to work with some operating systems. It just so happens that most of the old time chipsets have support built into current OS's. But I have had to get drivers for certain SCSI controllers and hit "F6" during Windows 2000 installation just to be able to use the drives attached to it. Same with Linux.

What we have here is basically everyone finally has support for the native mode of the HPT controllers, which after all is just an IDE controller. What we need is a kernel that doesn't load ANY support at all for HighPoint so that we can then feed the installer the Drivers while in expert mode. See once the kernel has booted up with "native mode" support then we can't load the RAID support drivers. That's basically what the bootdisks from HighPoint's website do. They have a modified installer bootdisk tha does just that and a driver disk to go along with it.

I don't know what I'm talking about.