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FASTRAK66 RAID
Written by Tarek Heiland <tarek@bakas.com.au>. Last updated 14-May-2002.
This email I wrote as a bit of an instruction manual to
myself.
There has been a lot of talk about patching the Promise
Ultra 66 to make it a Fasttrak 66.
These steps are not for the faint hearted, and you will be
using Beta, experimental and anything in between drivers. Lilo
may not work and you will need to #%!@#%@#$ around with loadlin
and a bootstrap DOS partition.
My config is
IDE mirror (2 x 20 GB Fujitsu)
MSI 6163 PRO M/B and Celeron 500,
Trident 975
PCI NIC ,
Intel pro 100 NIC,
128MB PC133 RAM
CD-rom on primary master
M/B IDE controller
I have it all working now !!!! (2.2.15 kernel) The Drives are
in UDMA 66 mode and it runs. I have successfully removed a
mirrored drive and have had it continue working. Rebuilding 20
GB mirror takes a while though!
Have not yet explored Raid -> Linux HDD fail notification
signal .
This makes basically a linux system bootable straight off the
mirror using a small mirrored loadlin dos partition to
bootstrap the linux system.
Things you will need!
a) A win98 Boot disk
b) A Redhat 6.0 CD-ROM (< 6 won't work and my 6.1 also
failed)
1. Obtain and get a Promise Ultra 66 IDE controller
2. Flash it with the latest Fasttrak Bios (current stable
1.20)
3. Solder 100R resistor from pin 23 to gnd (Sandwich with
screw to backplane)
4. Install RAID controller in system, and configure drive
array in Bios (No dramas here)
Forget about trying to run a normal CD-rom RH install, it
will not work, as there is no support for the IDE
controller.
5. Boot from Win98 boot disk, use Fdisk and create a small DOS
partition (mine is 24 MB FAT 12).
This is a really necessary step to make it bootable as you
will have some real fun with Fdisk in Linux on this
controller.. (make this partition active) (I have played with
latest LILO and various compile options without avail)
Reboot of floppy and format this partition.
Make sure it is bootable!
6. Go to www.promise.com
and download the Beta drivers and rawwrite a boot disk
You now require a Redhat 6.0 CD (my 6.1 one did not work and
hung after CD detection). Boot from this floppy, press enter at boot prompt Select 1 as
the first boot.
7. Redhat installation should now start
Partition drives as minimum
Small Dos created at step 5 (mine is 24MB Fat 12 for loadlin,
flash utilities etc - absolutely required as lilo will not work
- I also mount as /dos)
A Boot partition (to make sure there are no 1024 cyl
issues)
A swap partition
Your / partition + any more you would like.
You can in dual boots of course have the DOS any size you like
and any FAT flavour.
continue as per normal but at set time zone , shell out
(Alt-F2 and run ./cpu66) this copies files from floppy to /root
shell back and keep going as normal
8. It will crash and burn when it trys to run.
9. Reboot off floppy and at boot type
rescue root=/dev/hdxx initrd=initrd.img
xx=your root mount point mine is /dev/hde7
at prompt select 2 for second boot
This will get you into system the kernel running has nothing
going on it (i.e. you cannot mount VFAT or any other partition types which is a real
BUGGER!$#@$)
Make sure you have mtools installed, if not install it of
Redhat CD ("mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom" will work
thank God!)
As root run:
sh setup-u66
this file is what is copied over with the cpu66 command. It
copies the loadable module into the system and creates a new
initrd using mkinitrd + preloads the IDE module.
Now copy from /boot the active vmlinuz and initrd files.
10. Prepare DOS partition
a) Copy Files from Win 98 boot floppy to the DOS Partition
b) Modify the Files Autoexec.bat, setramd.bat to point to C:
instead of A:
c) Modify config.sys to remove unnecessary drivers (not
essential) and remove these drivers
d) From CD copy Loadlin to DOS partition
e) Copy vmlinuz and intrd files from floppy to DOS
partition
f) In Config.sys and Autoexec.bat insert new option to boot
linux Autoexec command will be
loadlin vmlinuz root=/dev/hdxx initrd=initrd
changing vmlinuz, initrd and hdxx as appropriate to match your
files and mount point
11. Reboot of DOS Partition, and start linux
12. Linux should boot with proper 6.0 Kernel now (at last)
This gets you basically going. Now you wish to upgrade the
Kernel again.
Have fun, even using the setup-U66 as a guide it refuses to
boot.
I have it going with the following way.
13. Copy Kernel source over (I am using 2.2.15)
14. Obtain IDE patch for Kernel from http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/hedrick/
15 Patch Kernel using "patch -p0 <Patch file name>" in
directory containing the linux-2.2.15 source directory tree
16 Now recompile Kernel making sure you include the PDC20262
IDE driver option (added by patch) ( if you are game the experimental raid option directly
beneath it (It is called something different but I cannot
remember)).
17. make dep, make bzImage etc as per usual
18. Run "mkinitrd /boot/initrd.000 2.2.15" to make a initrd
file
19. Copy the bzImage and initrd.000 files to the dos
partition
20. Modify autoexec.bat to reflect new Image files (loadlin bzImage root=/dev/hdxx initrd=initrd.000)
Reboot and all should be working.