On Thu, Feb 03, 2005 at 11:08:37AM -0000, Nigel Kendrick wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I have just installed a PCI SATA controller based on the SIL3112A
> chipset into my Centos-3 (latest kernel patches applied) system and
> moved an existing (not the boot disk) SATA drive from the onboard
> controller to the SIL-based one so I can setup software RAID with two
> 300GB drives. Kudzu/Linux found the controller and drives straight away
> and they've appeared as 'hda' and 'hdc'.
>
> I've managed to partition hdc (hda was already setup) and format it -
> this was VERY slow and 'top' showed a significant amount of interrupt
> time. A bit of Googling found the right command to enable DMA (hdparm
> -X66 -d1 /dev/hda etc.) and this seems to have cured that problem!
You have to use sata_sil module (libata) but if you are lucky like me,
you will not have a luck with performace. It heavily depends on HW
vendor (not on chipset itself).
You may try to use kernel 2.6 too.
> The system is going to be used as a backup server for bacula with
> various clients dumping data via 512K broadband and so the performance
> of the RAID system does not need to be blazingly fast - hence the I'm
> seeing if the cheap (?14!) controller is Ok for the job before trying
> anything else.
Better to switch to Intel chipset SATA interface or to IDE ATA.
--
Milan Kerslager
E-mail: milan.kerslager@xxxxxxxx
WWW: http://www.pslib.cz/ke/
