Hi Greg, First, thanks for the reply! On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 8:16 AM, Greg KH <greg at kroah.com> wrote: > On Wed, Aug 06, 2008 at 01:04:23PM +1000, Mark Nelson wrote: >> Hi Greg, >> >> I think I have an addition for the following list: >> http://www.linuxdriverproject.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/DriversNeeded >> >> I recently bought an MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard and it has a >> Promise SATA/SAS RAID (fakeraid) controller onboard that is not >> currently supported by the Linux kernel (as far as I can tell anyway). > > hardware raid is bad, stay away from it :) > > Seriously, if at all possible, it's just not worth it, use software > raid, it's faster and more reliable (you can restore your disks if the > controller breaks...) Never fear - I wasn't actually planning on using the proprietary fakeraid library (I have this silly rule about getting my data back in the same form I saved it in :) ). I just really wanted to be able to use the eSATA and internal SATA ports connected to the Promise chip. > >> References to the controller in the motherboard manual and the >> motherboard manufacturer's website: Promise T3 [1] >> >> Written on the actual chip on the motherboard: Promise PDC42819 [2] >> >> This chip is also used on Promise's own FastTrak TX2650 & TX4650 >> adapters [3] which have "partial open source" drivers [4], [5]. This >> driver looks like an open source wrapper around a binary blob (some >> fasttrak library for software fake raid, I think). >> >> Having a quick look through the source of Promise's driver, it looks >> like the driver has been hacked up out of a driver that was originally >> used for fakeraid on ATI and intel southbridges as well as Promise's >> SX4 adapter (and some Promise adapter called the OCTOPUSII). >> >> Promise has an open source commitment written on its werbsite [6] but >> it just relates to their SuperTrak products (not their FastTrak ones) >> and the stex driver. > > Try bringing this up on the linux-ata mailing list, the developers there > should be able to easily help you out. Excellent. I'll do that. Thanks for the tip! Thanks again! Mark.
