[dm-devel] What is the status of RAID5 support with pdc (AMD SB850 Southbridge) hardware?

[Mantas Kriaučiūnas]

Hi dmraid developers,

Thanks for improving free software :)
I wonder what is the status of RAID5 support with pdc (AMD SB850 Southbridge) hardware?

AFAIK currently dmraid doesn't support RAID5 on pdc according to 
'dmraid -l |grep pdc' output:
pdc    : Promise FastTrack (S,0,1,10)

There are a lot of people, who are forced to use dual boot with nonfree 
operating system, so we need more info about dmraid RAID5 support with 
AMD SB850 hardware - look for example at these links:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/ataraid-list/2011-January/msg00001.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1531032.html
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=634838

(it seems there is important information at Suse bugzilla: when RAID5 is 
created in BIOS then dmraid utility produces 'ERROR: pdc: RAID type 4 not 
supported' during search of RAID partitions)

It would be nice to know where is the problem - in dmraid utility or 
in kernel dm-raid45 module and when we could expect pdc RAID5 support?

It seems I found "official" technical documentation about AMD SB850 fakeRAID 
(after 6 hours searching) - see "RAIDBIOS_SB850_3.2.1540.31.zip" and
"RAID Option ROM Implementation Guide V1.8.pdf" at 
http://ftp.akl.lt/Linux/Baltix/devel/AMD-SB850-RAID-PROMISE/

I've downloaded this documentaton from official AMD software page:
http://wwwd.amd.com/AMD/SReleaseF.nsf/softwarepages/OptionROMs?OpenDocument
(click at "More Info" near the text "AMD SB850 Chipset SATA RAID Option ROM v3.2.1540.31 - SATA RAID Option ROM for SB850 chipset.")

Hope RAIDBIOS_SB850 binary files and documentation will be usefull for you 
and you will find some time to implement RAID5 support or at least tell 
me when we could expect RAID5 support for this fakeRAID.

I can help you to test, but I don't know how to implement this, so, I'm 
asking for help.

Waiting for answer and good luck,

--
Mantas Kriaučiūnas	 Jabber ID: mantas at akl.lt 	 GPG ID: 43535BD5
Developer of Baltix GNU/Linux OS - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltix
Public organization "Open Source for Lithuania" - www.akl.lt
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