CentOS - Jul 2005 - SATA controller compatibility

Greetings - I'm looking to put some cheap storage into my server, which 
is running centos 3.  I'm looking at the Maxtor SATA/150 PCI Card and a 
big maxtor sata drive.  I would like to make sure that CentOS has 
driver for this controller.  I looked in Red Hat's hardware database 
and did some google'ing but I couldn't find any info to confirm that 
this card is compatible.  Any ideas where else to look?

Thanks
Mike

Michael Thon <mrthon at verizon.net> wrote:
> Greetings - I'm looking to put some cheap storage into my
> server, which is running centos 3.
> I'm looking at the Maxtor SATA/150 PCI Card and a 
> big maxtor sata drive.
Multiple sources list this as an OEM'd Promise PDC20375
(FastTrak TX2).

The kicker is the older kernel, I don't think support is
included (I'll look when I have time).  I've never tried
patching with the GPL driver, but it should be possible on
2.4.21.
> I would like to make sure that CentOS has driver for
> this controller.
Promise finally got enough nags that it released the driver
as GPL in 2003.  So it certainly builds on kernel 2.4.  I've
just never checked for compatibility, as I largely avoid
Promise in general.
> I looked in Red Hat's hardware database and did some
> oogle'ing but I couldn't find any info to
> confirm that  this card is compatible.  Any ideas where
> else to look?
Grab the SRPM and install it.
Then cd to /usr/src/redhat/SPEC and prep the tree with
"rpmbuild -bp kernel-2.4.spec".
Now look in /usr/src/redhat/BUILD at the kernel tree --
either just at files for IDE, or possibly do a quick config
and see if it's listed under SATA support.
It will be "Promise FastTrak TX2".

If I have time, I'll do so tonight.

If you want absolute compatibility plus managability (and a
reliability option) for a few bucks more, the 2-channel SATA
3Ware Escalade 8006-2 is under $150.
Since it's going in a server, it can't hurt to have the
future option of RAID-1 by merely adding another drive.


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