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Promise FastTrak IDE RAID and RedHat 9.0 Installation as a boot disk

I used a TX2000 card in this example however most of the FastTrak (FastTrack) cards work in the same fashion, so there shouldn’t be any changes required.

To start off the FastTrak (FastTrak) linux driver comes with some really good instructions on how to get RedHat 9.0 to install on the array. I will reprint those here as I build off of those steps. The driver is available from the Promise web site. Download that file and save it to your hard disk and follow the instructions in the readme.txt to create a driver diskette for RedHat Linux installation.

There will soon be a howto covering upgrading your existing kernel to use the Promise FastTrak driver with the new kernel, as well as upgrading an existing installation of RedHat to use a Promise FastTrak card.

1) Start the RedHat Linux Installation with CD-ROM booting.

2) At the "Welcome to RedHat Linux" installation screen, prompt labeld "boot:" will appear at the bottom of the screen.

3) Please append the parameters below at the "boot:" prompt and press the Enter key:

"linux ide0=0x1f0,0x3f6,14 ide1=0x170,0x376,15 ide2=0 ide3=0 ide4=0 ide5=0 ide6=0 ide7=0 ide8=0 ide9=0 expert"

4) At the "Devices" dialog box, insert the FastTrak (FastTrack) Driver Disk in floppy drive and then select "OK" or "Yes" to continue install.

5) Enable "Configure advanced boot loader options" at Boot Loader Configuration menu, and type the kernel parameters below in the General kernel parameters field:

"ide0=0x1f0,0x3f6,14 ide1=0x170,0x376,15 ide2=0 ide3=0 ide4=0 ide5=0 ide6=0 ide7=0 ide8=0 ide9=0"

6) Continue with the installation as normal.

7) If the installer displays a warning message about "The kernel was unable to re-read the partition table on /dev/sd(x), (Device or resource busy)", Please do not click skip, just click ignore at the bottom to continue the install.

8) Press CTRL+ALT+F2 (if using text mode press ALT+F2) when installation is at the "Congratulations" menu.

9) Insert the FastTrak (FastTrack) Driver Disk Floppy, and issue the commands to load the FastTrak (FastTrack) driver.

umount /tmp/fd0 (Just in case RedHat forgot this)
chroot /mnt/sysimage
mount /dev/fd0 /mnt
(If USB floppy, please choose USB floppy device as /dev/sdb)
cd /mnt
sh setup-ft

Here is where I diverge from the instructions. The instructions tell me to "Choose your selection here, after FastTrak (FastTrack) driver setup successful." This of course made no sense to me... So I just chalked it up to "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" and moved on.
This is what I did.

10) I went and modified all references to LABEL=/ and LABEL=/boot in the /etc/fstab file to point to the actual devices instead of the labels. I hate the labels, and they can get confusing very easily.

vi /etc/fstab
/dev/sda3 / ext3 ....
/dev/sda1 /boot ext3 ....

11) Now we want to edit the grub configuration to point to the device as well.

cd /boot/grub/grub.conf

edit the vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 line to read:

root=/dev/sda3

instead of:

root=LABEL=/

If there is a section on the vmlinuz line that reads hda-scsi=/dev/hdX, you will also want to remove that. That sets the IDE to SCSI bridge that is sometimes installed when you install RedHat. Since the FastTrak (FastTrack) driver already emulates SCSI, it is no longer needed.

12) Now we want to rebuild the root disk for the kernel to ensure the driver (kernel module) for the FastTrak (FastTrack) card is loaded on bootup. (I am fairly certain that this step is the one that is missing from the Promise instructions.)

/sbin/mkinitrd -v -f /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img 2.4.20-8

You should see some output lines indicating that it added some modules, and we are specifically looking for the FastTrak.o.

13) Once you have done all that CTRL+ALT+F7 (CTRL+ALT+F1 if you are in text mode) and hit the OK to reboot the machine.

If everything has been installed properly, the computer should boot up without any problem and automatically load.

FAQ: 1) Why are there two versions of the same HowTo?
I realized that people might be searching for the incorrect information with regard to the name of the Promise FastTrak card, and I wanted to make sure that the information was available to people searching for FastTrak as well as FastTrack cards.

2) Do I have to rebuild the array from the BIOS?
I had read on a forum somewhere (I forget where, but if I knew I post a link here), where a user stated that if the RAID array on a Promise FastTrak (FastTrack) failed (talking RAID 1 here), you would have to have the machine offline in BIOS mode and wait for the RAID array to rebuild itself. THIS IS NOT TRUE! The FastTrak kernel module actually handles the rebuilding itself. I recently had a server where one of the hard drives had failed. The system continued as it should have. When I replaced the drive in a maintenance window, I decided to let the machine boot, and I would come back to the rebuild later. I was surprised to find that the RAID array had been rebuilt automattically by the FastTrak driver. So if you see somebody say that is a reason not to use the FastTrak card, tell them they are wrong. :)
You can check the status of the RAID Array as well as the status of the rebuild by doing:
cat /proc/scsi/FastTrak/# (where number will be the array number).
You should see out like this:
[root@localhost root]# cat /proc/scsi/FastTrak/0
PROMISE FastTrak Series Linux Driver Version 1.02.0.25
Adapter1 - FastTrak TX2000, IRQ(15)
Array - Array[1] : 1X2 Mirror (Rebuilding)
Drive -
1: SAMSUNG SP0411 Pri/Master Array[1] 40059MB BASE(0x9000) BM(0xa000) UDMA5
* 3: SAMSUNG SP0411 Sec/Master Array[1] 40059MB BASE(0x9800) BM(0xa008) UDMA5

Rebuilding Array1 - percentage : 3 %
- spent time : 1 (minutes)
- rebuilding drive : *