On Thu, 2005-09-08 at 19:26 -0700, Todd Cary wrote:
> I have RH 8 running on a Abit BE7-RAID motherboard. My task is
> installing Centos 4.1 with limited knowledge on installing with hardware
> RAID.
It is _not_ hardware RAID, but FRAID (i.e., 100% software).
> The arrays are still in place for the two pairs of drives.
Understand by "array" you are talking about "regular looking ATA drives"
that have a specific disk organization the FRAID (100% software) driver
can understand.
You either need to load an equivalent software driver under Linux (which
may or may not be possible), or use the newer kernel 2.6 LVM2-DM (Device
Mapper) which now has some FRAID meta-data support. I've found both to
be largely _broken_ and untrustworthy in general, but I'm hopeful for
the latter in the future.
> HighPoint only shows drivers up through RH 9.
Correct, because the vendor has produced 100% proprietary, binary-only
modules for _specific_ kernel versions. There is no GPL driver, there
is _no_ general, linkable driver (AFAICT). FRAID has always suffered,
and will always suffer, from the fact that 100% of the RAID logic is in
the software, and that software is almost always licensed from a 3rd
party and proprietary.
The Device Mapper approach is interesting though. Instead of relying on
the vendor's proprietary driver/logic, it can read the meta-data and use
the generic software RAID built in the Linux kernel -- by-passing any
need for the proprietary FRAID software/logic.
> Is there anyone who can take me through the steps? Remove the existing
> arrays? Will the drivers work with Centos 4.1?
The drivers won't even work on Fedora Core and even some newer Red Hat
Linux kernel updates.
> Since I used Windows to download the HighPoint tar file for RH 9,
> I am not what I should do with it.
Can you send me a link? I'd be interested in knowing what they offer.
--
Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@xxxxxxxx http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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