[mythtv-users] NAS RAID 5 for MythTv

Andreas Ntaflos daff at dword.org
Fri Feb 9 00:25:49 UTC 2007


On Friday 09 February 2007 00:23:18 Stroller wrote:
> On 8 Feb 2007, at 20:52, Robert Kulagowski wrote:
> > ...
> > Yes, I have a 5x320GB RAID-5 on a 9500S-12.  One of the drives is
> > currently out and RMAd to Seagate, so I'm running with only 4 drives.
> >
> > I didn't have to power down the server to pull the drive - the RAID
> > card
> > had already bypassed the drive because it was throwing errors.
>
> That's very useful to hear.
>
> What are the drivers like for the 9500? OSS?
> Written by the manufacturer? Part of the main kernel tree?

As far as I can see it's in the main kernel:

$ grep 3W /usr/src/linux/.config
# CONFIG_BLK_DEV_3W_XXXX_RAID is not set
# CONFIG_SCSI_3W_9XXX is not set

> I have an old Compaq Proliant 6500 running as a home server at the
> moment, but I haven't been able to migrate all my services to it
> because of some glitches which I just don't seem to be able to track
> down. My best guess is that either my hardware is flaky or simply
> that Linux no longer properly supports well such an old & obscure
> system. Certainly some of the diagnostic utilities don't work very
> well - I don't think it's possible to determine drive status under
> Linux - and you can't spin down the (very loud) fans. Simply put life
> would be easier if I were able to replace it and drive space would be
> cheaper using SATA.
>
> I'd be very interested to hear any other recommendations for an SATA
> hardware RAID card that supports hot-swap & can be fully configured
> under Linux. Although (considering the typical £1:$1 import rate
> conversion) I'd prefer to pay less than $309, that price is
> acceptable and far more important is driver support. I'd like a hot-
> swap card that can easily be queried for driver status using the CLI,
> logs errors to syslog and which can be expected to be supported under
> Linux forever & a day (I thought I might look at some of those with
> OpenBSD support, reasoning these cards are likely to have open driver
> documentation & good Linux support, too).

The new libata stuff made it into the 2.6.19 mainline kernel and supports many 
SATA controllers, especially the cheap ones (EUR 50,00--100,00), but not many 
have driver support for hotswap. Check out 

http://linux-ata.org/driver-status.html 

where you can see what hardware is supported and which features are available. 
Don't forget to check the driver/feature matrix before going out and buying a 
Promise TX4 (EUR 80,00) like I did; the hardware supports all the nice stuff 
but the driver doesn't.

It seems that hardware implementing the AHCI specs are best supported by 
libata but I don't know of any controller cards you can purchase separately. 
Maybe some mainboards with newer Intel or Nvidia chipsets have such SATA 
controllers built in? 

The 3ware controllers are probably the best option for the moment as libata 
certainly needs a few more months before becoming really useful.

That's just my two cents, though, others probably have more experience with 
SATA controllers and related stuff.

Andreas
-- 
Andreas "daff" Ntaflos
Vienna, Austria

GPG Fingerprint: 6234 2E8E 5C81 C6CB E5EC  7E65 397C E2A8 090C A9B4
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20070209/fb43f4bc/attachment.pgp 


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list