Does anyone have any experience with an 8-port (or higher) Serial ATA Host Adapter card? I'm looking for something that will JUST give me access to the SATA disks, and NOT give me hardware (or pseudo-hardware) RAID. Can anybody suggest a card that can be used for Linux Software RAID? I had great luck with the on-board Silicon Image-based SATA ports that came on a SuperMicro motherboard. But I need up to 16-ports so I'm going to need ports on a PCI-X card. I have just tried two cards with little success. A 3ware Escolade 8506 and a new Promise SATA II 150 SX8 card (I got a pre-production sample). I can't get the 3ware card to show up the individual drives within Linux. I'm now making a hardware RAID before booting up; hopefully Linux will see that. I have a similar problem with the Promise card. The Promise card uses a new "block device" driver called Carmel. The drives show up in my Kernel log -- see below -- but because they are just seen as generic devices, I'm told I may have to create devices with 'mknod' in order to access them. I have no idea how to do that. Can someone explain the process. I know the "major" number has to be 160. But how about the minor numbers? And what exactly do I have to enter for each device? I think the Promise card has great promise (no pun intended) for software RAID. It's relatively cheap (US $250) and doesn't contain any on-board processing. It's just a host adapter meant for software RAID. But I'm stumped as to how to get access to the drives. By the way, I'm using the 2.6.6 kernel with Mandrake 10. Here are my kernel logs: May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel version 0.8 May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): found 8 interesting devices May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 0 device 490234752 sectors May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 0 device "Maxtor 7Y250M0" May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 1 device 490234752 sectors May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 1 device "Maxtor 7Y250M0" May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 2 device 490234752 sectors May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 2 device "Maxtor 7Y250M0" May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 3 device 490234752 sectors May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 3 device "Maxtor 7Y250M0" May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 4 device 490234752 sectors May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 4 device "Maxtor 7Y250M0" May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 5 device 490234752 sectors May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 5 device "Maxtor 7Y250M0" May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 6 device 490234752 sectors May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 6 device "Maxtor 7Y250M0" May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 7 device 490234752 sectors May 5 01:00:54 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): port 7 device "Maxtor 7Y250M0" May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: /dev/carmel/0_0: unknown partition table May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: /dev/carmel/0_1: unknown partition table May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: /dev/carmel/0_2: unknown partition table May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: /dev/carmel/0_3: unknown partition table May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: /dev/carmel/0_4: unknown partition table May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: /dev/carmel/0_5: unknown partition table May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: /dev/carmel/0_6: unknown partition table May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: /dev/carmel/0_7: unknown partition table May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: carmel(0000:05:01.0): 8 ports activated May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: carmel0: pci 0000:05:01.0, ports 8, io fc400000, irq 96, major 160 May 5 01:00:55 localhost kernel: SCSI subsystem initialized Regards, Andy Liebman - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-raid" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
