2002-10-25 19:26:06

by Ferry

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: KT333, IO-APIC, Promise Fasttrak, Initrd

Hey there,

this is gonna be a long one, please bear with me. :-)

I've got several problems/questions. My slackware 8.1 iso-image can't
install so I tried making my own install flop (I've made several kernels
before since 2.2.4 for various machines) which I think is made ok (pretty
sure of it), but I've got some problems with it.

First my setup:

MSI KT3 Turbo2-R mainboard
AthlonXP 2000+
512MB 333MHz DDR
MSI GF4-MX460-VTP
Realtek 8139
Promise Fasttrak Lite IDE RAID (onboard see
http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=
341&MODEL=MS-6380E)

The promise fasttrak controller has 4 disks... I just use it as a fancy IDE
controller. This controller doesn't have a jumper/BIOS setting for putting
it in IDE mode so I tricked it. Attached the harddisks one by one so arrays
were created of one disk each. This works under WinXP. Most of the
partitions were created on my previous system with PIIX intel controllers
and are read without probs under XP.

This goes for all my tests... made a dir /tmp/lindisk/<name>.i copied the
.config from /usr/src/linux to the <name.i>/config and copied the System.map
and gzipped it in the <name.i>. Put the makedisk sh script and the
1440k.img.gz (compressed formatted floppy image for mount usage) to the
/tmp/lindisk. Then made kernels and copied bzImage to the <name.i> and ran
./makedisk <name.i> <name.i>/bzImage. Next I made the floppy disk using dd
if=/tmp/<name.i> of=/dev/fd0u1440 (the docs say to use zcat, but I found
with some defected floppy disks it didn't give errors whilst dd does). The
floppies boot so it should be fine :-)

Now the problems start. I've used 2.4.19 and 2.4.20-pre11 (the latest at
this moment)

On 2.4.19 I compiled with APIC but without IO-APIC. It gave messages about
spurious IRQ's (7.. nothing is connected to the parallel port tho', also
there is no parallel port support in the kernels cause I wanted to keep them
as small as possible). The 2.4.20pre is compiled with IO-APIC and didn't
give those messages.

It gives the message i should contact Vojtech so I did for the via chipset.

The RAID controller comes up with both hd[e-h] and d<x>p<y>'s. Can I use the
hd[e-h]'s? since I have 1 disk arrays?

Tried booting into my old partitions with the hdg3 but came up with IO
errors. I'm guessing it has to do with the south bridge not being supported
or the ext 2 partitions having trouble with being on the raid controller.

I used the slackware install.[1-5] from the current tree (downloaded
yesterday). After loading the first disk it nicely mentions it has to load 5
disks, asks for the 2nd I put it in and it's done reading in 0.1secs and
asks for 3, it does that for all the remaining 4 disks (that means, it
actually reads the first disk but only asks for the rest but doesn't
actually read them). Then it boots.... Comes up with message that the dir
#41 is invalid which probably is because the other 4 disks aren't loaded.

Hoping someone can tell me more or has some experimental patches. I have
reasonable computer knowledge and am willing to help were I can. Can't
really program yet but I'm learning C++ (the kernel looks really tough tho'
:-()

Found something in the (unofficial) archives that's probably similar:

quote:

On 2002-09-24T19:19:34,
Benjamin LaHaise <[email protected]> said:

> > >APIC makes perfect sense albeit rare. Single processor IO APICs are
very
> > >rare and are usually MP systems with only one processor.
> > I think most AMD Athlon boards have an IO APIC
> I'd love to have it enabled in a distro kernel, but as Arjan pointed out,
it
> currently breaks some laptops if enabled.

Well, _not_ enabling IO-APIC on UP breaks my Athlon / KT333 at home; random
freezes are the result, so I prefer to enable it...

So whichever default is chosen, someone is burned. I hate hardware.

--

Well nice weekend everyone and TIA





2002-10-25 20:48:52

by Alan

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: KT333, IO-APIC, Promise Fasttrak, Initrd

On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 20:32, freaky wrote:
> it in IDE mode so I tricked it. Attached the harddisks one by one so arrays
> were created of one disk each. This works under WinXP. Most of the
> partitions were created on my previous system with PIIX intel controllers
> and are read without probs under XP.

Thats still going to have strange raid blocks on it. However if you then
partitioned the driver you should have blown it away with luck.

> The RAID controller comes up with both hd[e-h] and d<x>p<y>'s. Can I use the
> hd[e-h]'s? since I have 1 disk arrays?

hde/f/g/h are the real disks as a normal controller would see them. The
ataraid devices are interpreting a subset (the bits we know about) of
the raid partitioning the promise does

> Tried booting into my old partitions with the hdg3 but came up with IO
> errors. I'm guessing it has to do with the south bridge not being supported
> or the ext 2 partitions having trouble with being on the raid controller.

Need more details. Exact error messages matter here


2002-10-25 21:04:44

by Ferry

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: KT333, IO-APIC, Promise Fasttrak, Initrd

> On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 20:32, freaky wrote:
> > it in IDE mode so I tricked it. Attached the harddisks one by one so
arrays
> > were created of one disk each. This works under WinXP. Most of the
> > partitions were created on my previous system with PIIX intel
controllers
> > and are read without probs under XP.
>
> Thats still going to have strange raid blocks on it. However if you then
> partitioned the driver you should have blown it away with luck.

No problems under XP so far...what kind of blocks would that be? Only had
time-outs on one of the disks when it was only slave (no master present
forgot to attach it :/) but since the master is attached that's gone.... all
my old data plays fine, mainly mp3's, games and movies.

I'll supply all of the info later, low on time now and it's late. Want the
kernel config and such as well? BIOS setup?

TIA and regards


2002-10-25 21:28:56

by Alan

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: KT333, IO-APIC, Promise Fasttrak, Initrd

On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 22:10, freaky wrote:
> No problems under XP so far...what kind of blocks would that be? Only had
> time-outs on one of the disks when it was only slave (no master present
> forgot to attach it :/) but since the master is attached that's gone.... all
> my old data plays fine, mainly mp3's, games and movies.

The HPT and Promise raid cards add extra partition table type data of
their own identifying each volume. Their drivers then read and honour
that info.

> I'll supply all of the info later, low on time now and it's late. Want the
> kernel config and such as well? BIOS setup?

If it looks useful include it 8)

2002-10-26 06:46:53

by Ferry

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: KT333, IO-APIC, Promise Fasttrak, Initrd

> On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 22:10, freaky wrote:
> > No problems under XP so far...what kind of blocks would that be? Only
had
> > time-outs on one of the disks when it was only slave (no master present
> > forgot to attach it :/) but since the master is attached that's gone....
all
> > my old data plays fine, mainly mp3's, games and movies.
>
> The HPT and Promise raid cards add extra partition table type data of
> their own identifying each volume. Their drivers then read and honour
> that info.

So that would be data on the MBR, or partition table? Perhaps win doesn't
have probs because it can handle to partitions types properly. MSI told me
themselves the trick would work (so I guess it might support to run as IDE
controller but to save money they didn't include the jumper thingy.... I'll
try contacting promise on this one, I tried that once before with the
time-outs but no replies. :-().

> > I'll supply all of the info later, low on time now and it's late. Want
the
> > kernel config and such as well? BIOS setup?
>
> If it looks useful include it 8)

Sure. But since I can't boot, err ok it boots but no shell :-( it won't be
all that much

> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
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>
>


2002-10-26 13:43:25

by Alan

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: KT333, IO-APIC, Promise Fasttrak, Initrd

On Sat, 2002-10-26 at 07:53, freaky wrote:
> So that would be data on the MBR, or partition table? Perhaps win doesn't
> have probs because it can handle to partitions types properly. MSI told me

No its seperate. The hpt/promise raid "borrows" part of the disk and
hides it.

2002-10-26 14:13:01

by Ferry

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: KT333, IO-APIC, Promise Fasttrak, Initrd

There's no data loss that I know off... Shouldn't I atleast have notices
something if data was overwritten? Shouldn't the partition tables be corrupt
then? (Both disk manager and linux fdisk see them correctly). Don't get me
wrong :-) I'm not saying you're wrong, I wouldn't dare :-), I just find it
strange I haven't noticed anything and I've been running this setup for
several weeks now. Is there anyway I could see this block so I can see it
actually did create it? Perhaps it's written on space unlikely to be used?

Booted into the slack rescue disk this morning (busybox) and tried email the
log but the telnet can't handle pipes or something (it didn't work :-() so
I'll guess I'll have to write the whole thing down.

fdisk did recognize all the partitions as they were on the PIIX controllers
the disks come from (on the hd[e-h] devices) I was unable to mount anything
tho' mount /dev/hdh3 /mnt/hd gave me a file doesn't exist (mnt/hd dir
exists) support for the required filesystems is compiled in.

Also, the /dev/d<x>p<y> devices didn't exist, so I probably have to create
them myself perhaps then I can mount. I'll check the files for the
major/minors.

The dmesg in busy box returned more data then the kernel itself spewed
during boot. I've never seen that before? Is it writing extra debuging info
nowadays?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan Cox" <[email protected]>
To: "freaky" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Linux Kernel Mailing List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, October 26, 2002 4:06 PM
Subject: Re: KT333, IO-APIC, Promise Fasttrak, Initrd


> On Sat, 2002-10-26 at 07:53, freaky wrote:
> > So that would be data on the MBR, or partition table? Perhaps win
doesn't
> > have probs because it can handle to partitions types properly. MSI told
me
>
> No its seperate. The hpt/promise raid "borrows" part of the disk and
> hides it.
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to [email protected]
> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
>