This site is for all the owners of a Promise Sx4000 IDE Raid Controller who want to use this good piece of hardware with Linux
Since the drivers at promise.com are a little outdated, Stefan
Zegers, Technical Support Engineer working at Promise Netherlands
was so kind to send me the linux drivers as partial
source-code (linked against a precompiled library), so
I was able to compile them for the latest kernel at this time (2.4.21).
I asked Mr. Zegers if it's ok to give the driver away to folks who'd like to have it and he said "Yes, it is freeware :-)"
... so here it is ...
The latest SX4000 driver sources (28.Oct.2003) somehow screwd up my
file system on the raid array. So be careful.
*NEW* I had some trouble with Bios Version 1.01.0.15, sometimes during Controller initialization (Controller Firmware), it didn't recognize some of my drives so I upgraded the Controller-Bios to version 1.02.0.5 and problems are gone, well, at least until now :-).
Here are some examples for those who don't know how to (2)initialize the modules or to (1)compile the drivers:
Step 1:) unpacking the sources and compiling the drivers:
user@host#> tar xvfz promisesx4000.tar.gz
now copy the module to your preferred directory (e.g. /lib/modules/2.4.xx/kernel/drivers/scsi) and intialize it by typing:
user@host#> insmod $PATH_TO_MODULE/FastTrak.o
and finally you should see something like this:
Promise FastTrak SX4000 Linux Driver Version 1.01.0.12 (27.NOV.2002)
FastTrak: Installed FastTrak SX4000 Local DIMM - 128MB
scsi0 : FastTrak SX4000
Vendor: Promise Model: 3 Disk RAID5 Rev: 1.10
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
That's it, have fun with your SX4000 :-) Step 2:) unpacking the binary modules, installing and initializing the drivers:
user@host#> tar xvfz sx4000-2.4.20.tar.gz
You'll get that output:
promise/
promise/README
promise/FastTrak.o
now copy the module to your preferred directory (e.g. /lib/modules/2.4.xx/kernel/drivers/scsi) and intialize it by typing:
user@host#> insmod $PATH_TO_MODULE/FastTrak.o
and finally you should see something like this (the output as in Step 1):
Promise FastTrak SX4000 Linux Driver Version 1.01.0.12 (27.NOV.2002)
FastTrak: Installed FastTrak SX4000 Local DIMM - 128MB
scsi0 : FastTrak SX4000
Vendor: Promise Model: 3 Disk RAID5 Rev: 1.10
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Troubleshooting
If initialization doesn't work the way it should:
- be sure to use the correct Bios with your SX4000 controller
- don't forget to enable SCSI Support in your Kernel