On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 11:27 PM, Mikael Pettersson <mikpe@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Mark Nelson writes:
> > On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 9:10 PM, Mikael Pettersson <mikpe@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > Mark Nelson writes:
> > > > Hi All,
> > > >
> > > > I recently bought an MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard and it has a Promise
> > > > PDC42819 SATA/SAS controller onboard. I haven't been able to get the
> > > > controller to work with any of the libata sata drivers in mainline
> > > > (although I did only try sata_promise, sata_sx4 or ahci; last two I was
> > > > doubtful about but I figured it was worth a try).
> > > >
> > > > Has anyone played with this controller under Linux before and can it be
> > > > made to work with any of the open source drivers - I would realy like
> > > > to use the eSATA and internal SATA ports attached to this controller
> > > > (and I don't want to trust my data to the promise binary blob)? Maybe
> > > > it's as simple as adding the right PCI ID to sata_promise, but I wasn't
> > > > sure what kind of board it should be: 2037x, 2057x, 20319, 40518, 20619,
> > > > or maybe some new one...
> > > >
> > > > I'm not sure how important this is but I gathered the following info
> > > > about the controller:
> > > >
> > > > 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.
> > > >
> > > > The following is the hunk of lspci output that refers to the controller:
> > > >
> > > > 02:00.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: Promise Technology, Inc. Unknown
> > > > device [105a:3f20]
> > >
> > > This is pure speculation, but _if_ it is similar to the chips
> > > driven by sata_promise then it should be close to the 40518 family
> > > (all the other ones are older). So adding that PCI id as a
> > > board_40518 in pdc_ata_pci_tbl[] just might do the trick.
> > >
> > Hi Mikael,
> >
> > First of all thanks for the reply. It's taken me a while because I
> > had to get my hands on a spare SATA disk to test with (ended up
> > with a 60GB eSATA disk).
> >
> > So, after adding the following PCI ID line:
> >
> > { PCI_VDEVICE(PROMISE, 0x3f20), board_40518 },
> >
> > I can load the module and I get the following in dmesg:
> >
> > sata_promise 0000:02:00.0: version 2.12
> > ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:00.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
> > PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:02:00.0 to 64
> > scsi7 : sata_promise
> > scsi8 : sata_promise
> > scsi9 : sata_promise
> > scsi10 : sata_promise
> > ata7: SATA max UDMA/133 mmio m4096@0xfbeff000 ata 0xfbeff380 irq 17
> > ata8: SATA max UDMA/133 mmio m4096@0xfbeff000 ata 0xfbeff280 irq 17
> > ata9: SATA max UDMA/133 mmio m4096@0xfbeff000 ata 0xfbeff200 irq 17
> > ata10: SATA max UDMA/133 mmio m4096@0xfbeff000 ata 0xfbeff300 irq 17
> > ata7: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
> > ata8: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
> > ata9: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
> > ata10: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
> >
> > So it looks like it's at least found the SATA ports. But something's
> > not quite right because as soon as I load the module, the hard disk
> > activity LEDs are constantly on (my motherboard has two LEDs for
> > any drive activity on the Promise controller).
> >
> > If I plug the eSATA disk I'm using to test into one of the eSATA
> > ports of the Promise controller after I've already booted and loaded
> > the module, I see the following in dmesg:
> >
> > ata10: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0xe frozen
> > ata10: hotplug_status 0x40
> > ata10: hard resetting link
> > ata10: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
> > ata10: EH complete
> > ata10: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0xe frozen
> > ata10: hotplug_status 0x40
> > ata10: hard resetting link
> > ata10: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
> > ata10: EH complete
> >
> > But I'm not sure if sata_promise supports hotplug of drives so maybe
> > that's to be expected.
> >
> > If I boot with the eSATA drive connected (the drive is found in the
> > Promise FastTrak BIOS), when I load the sata_promise module no hard
> > disks are found and I get exactly the same output to dmesg as the
> > first example I showed above.
> >
> > Is there some way I can turn on more debugging output in the
> > sata_promise driver or libata?
> >
> > And (possibly too early to tell, but) does this look promising (no pun
> > intended)?
>
> Not so promising. It didn't "find" the SATA ports, those addresses
> are a function of the PCI BARs and the board type we assign to the
> PCI ID, and we just guessed the board type.
Ahhh, that's not so promising at all then...
>
> sata_promise does support hotplugging (since 2.6.22 or so), but the
> messages you got do not indicate successful hotplugging. In particular,
> you should see "link up" not "link down".
>
> It does look like 0x3f20 is fairly different from previous chips.
Yes, I was a bit worried when I noticed that the majority of
Promise controllers actually had a Marvell logo on them
and this one didn't...
> But without docs or a reference driver I cannot really say what it
> would take to support it, sorry.
Yeah, I figured as much after reading that hardware docs
are only available under NDA... I do have Promise's "partial
open source driver" all working with the controller; but I
don't think that's what you meant by reference driver, is it?
Thanks!
Mark
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