CentOS - Jul 2005 - 915 Combo MS-7058 Ver1

Hi All
        
        Just like to know if some one got or has running a "VIA 6410 IDE
RAID Controller" with centos 4(.1) I have a server I need to get
install, that has this on-board
I have even test the with Knoppix 3.8 and it don't not pick it up at
all. but the card and the drivers work ok ( tested this with the bart PE
(XP) cd ) 
 

See BUG.  "That's not a bug, it's a feature!"  
A bug can be changed to a feature by documenting it.


Michael Falzon (RHCT) 
Mozy's Swamp BBs & Red Dwarf BBs
http://mozysswamp.org
Registered LFS User   #406
Registered Linux User #204397

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On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 16:40 +1000, Michael Falzon wrote:
> Hi All Just like to know if some one got or has running a "VIA 6410
> IDE RAID Controller" with centos 4(.1) I have a server I need to get
> install, that has this on-board I have even test the with Knoppix 3.8
> and it don't not pick it up at all. but the card and the drivers work
> ok ( tested this with the bart PE(XP) cd ) 
The ViA VT641x/642x are PCI to ATA/SATA chips.
They seem to offer a "FRAID" (Fake RAID) BIOS option.

There is basic, 16-bit BIOS boot-time/setup, but _no_ on-board
hardware/firmware intelligence.  100% of RAID functionality is driven by
your CPU with the FRAID driver -- i.e., software RAID.
>From what I've read, no Linux kernel seems to integrate the driver yet,
at least not through 2.6.11.  The Open Source (not GPL?) driver I found
was here (see the bottom of the page):  
  http://source.robertk.com/  

ViA has their own, official driver that claims to work with the VT6410,
VT6420, VT6421 here:  
  http://www.viaarena.com/Default.aspx?PageID=2  

There are 2 driver parts.  One is called "viapubraid", which seems to
be the "stub driver," open source and it builds against the kernel
version.  The other is "viaprvraid" which is object code (.o) only,
much bigger (>100KiB), and likely the "FRAID IP" -- i.e., the RAID
code
is software and licensed from a 3rd party, which won't allow it to be
open sourced.

So not only is it a PITA to just work as "standard ATA" in Linux, but
you can pretty much forget RAID.

-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
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