RAID Configuration with Highpoint RocketRaid 1640

[noyzy]

I am very new to debian and have come straight from a windows mindset.

I have started to create a NAS server for work and so far have BackupPC working. My hard drives have finally turned up this week and I am using a Highpoint RocketRaid 1640 with 3 500GB hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration (built in BIOS). I initially had the noob thought that this array would then appear in /dev but I was sadly mistaken. Can somebody explain to me how I can see this array so that I can mount it? Do I have to reconfigure my kernel?
I went onto the highpoint site and found that there was no set driver for debian... I do however believe there would be a challenging way to get this to work though. I have search everywhere today though and can not find anything about setting up a rocketraid 1640 with debian.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can shince some light on this issue.

[noyzy]

I have decided to try dmraid instead of getting the drivers to work. Please stop me if this isn't a good method. I have installed dmraid but when I send "dmraid -ay" in the terminal I get the following error:

ERROR: hpt45x: RAID type 8 not supported
ERROR: adding /dev/hde to RAID set "hpt45x_ihiafcedi"
ERROR: hpt45x: RAID type 8 not supported
ERROR: adding /dev/hdg to RAID set "hpt45x_ihiafcedi"
ERROR: hpt45x: RAID type 8 not supported
ERROR: adding /dev/hdi to RAID set "hpt45x_ihiafcedi"
No RAID sets

Can anyone inform me what this means?

[noyzy]

Disregard my last post. I found another forum where a guy had the exact problem as me with a 1640 rocketraid.

Problems when installing RAID5 with a Highpoint 1640 card - Ubuntu Forums

To fix his problem he installed the hpt374 proprietary driver (the "open source" one). This takes me back to what I was trying yesterday... Can anybody walk me through the steps of installing this driver as I could not get it to work on my debian etch.

[noyzy]

As I did not mind loosing the data on my 3 drives I decided to go with software RAID. If you are in the same situation and want a simple guide to set up a softraid I gaurantee this forum will answer your questions: Howto: Create RAID5 and Expand/Grow it using mdadm without loosing data. - Ubuntu Forums .

If anyone can still explain how to install the opensource rocketraid 1460 driver onto debian etch it would still benifit me and hopefully anyone else that comes accross the same problem.

[jan1234]

Well, I had a hard time setting up the driver for the rocketraid 1640 too. My setup was a centos 4.4 one, and I've never worked with a debian/ubuntu like installation, but maybe it helps. So the following is known to work on centos, but may also apply to other linux distro's.

Installing a linux distro on a rocketraid 1640 raid device

To install a 'fresh' installation on a raid volume of the rocketraid with rhel/centos/fedora (and maybe other linux distros) do the following:

First check if the version you are installing has a driver disk for download. If there is you can skip the following steps. If not you need to create a custom driver disk.

You need a working installation of the distro you are about to install on the raid volume with development packages.

Download the kernel devel package. (smp too for multiprocessor systems).

yum install kernel-devel kernel-smp-devel
cd /usr/src/kernel/`version`/
make oldconfig

Dowload the 'open-source' driver from highpoint, and compile it:

cd `whatever`
make KERNELDIR=/usr/src/kernel/`version`
mkdir `version without patchnumer`/i686
mv hpt374.ko `version without patchnumer`/i686

Do the last 2 steps for smp too if required.

Download a driver disk from the highpoint side, create it and mount it.

dd if=rhel4.img of=/dev/fd0
mount /dev/fd0 /media/floppy

Now place the newly created drivers on the floppy with:

find `versie`* | cpio -o -H crc | gzip -9 > /media/floppy/modules.cgz

Unmount the floppy:

umount /media/floppy

Now you've created the driver disk for the highpoint 1640 for the version you want to install.

Start the installation on the system with

linux dd hde=noprobe hdf=noprobe hdg=noprobe hdh=noprobe

After the installation reboot enter 'a' for kernel parameters. Enter:

hde=noprobe hdf=noprobe hdg=noprobe hdh=noprobe

After start add the above line to /etc/grub.conf

Updating/upgrading the kernel

When updating the kernel, the driver will no longer work. So be sure to exclude the kernel from automatic updates.

To get the driver working with an updated kernel do the following:

Download the updated kernel:
yum update kernel

Now don't reboot.

Make a driver for the updated kernel version as done above (Download kernel devel packages, make them with 'make oldconifg' and make the 'open-source' driver from highpoint).

Place the new driver in:

mkdir /lib/modules/`version`/updates
mv hpt374.ko /lib/modules/`version`/updates/

Add the following line to '/lib/modules/`version`/modules.dep' (1 line)

/lib/modules/`version`/updates/hpt374.ko: /lib/modules/`version`/kernel/drivers/scsi/scsi_mod.ko

Make the bootimage (remove an already existing version if there is one):

mkinitrd /boot/initrd-`version`.img `version`

Now reboot.

More information.

Be sure to read the readme.txt in the 'open-source' driver and the installation guide on one of the linux driver disks, for some important information.

[screaminglucy]

I didn't install onto the raid drive but I got my rocketraid working in Ubuntu...see my post in this thread: Problem with old Hardware Driver - Ubuntu Forums

[ravl]

2 jan1234:
I just want to say big THANK YOU, with your guide I finally got HighPoint Rocketraid 1810 working under CentOS 5.2 using their open source drivers.

I compiled driver, made updated driver disk for v4 and had to make new bootimage (without sata_mv.ko) before the first boot after installation, because system would otherwise freeze on "Red Hat nash version 5.1.19.6 starting" and RAID5 array would become broken.
With updated bootimage system works OK.