Dual RocketRaid 2300 issues [Resolved]

Anyone else running two of these in a system? Been reading up on the various issues with Rocketraid. Obviously won't run parity drive on this.

Initially I put one in, booted, RR Bios saw all four drives, then into unRaid and all drives are there. I confirmed this using the preclear_disk.sh -l. (love this util)

Then added second card, first RR BIOS comes up and stalls with "Out of memory" error. System frozen. Need to power off. Run either card aloen, fine, run both together and get the error.

Work around - As per support, as soon as the RR Bios pops up, hit the END key to bypass. Do this twice (for each controller), system boots fine and the preclear utility shows four drives on the one controller and the single drive I have on the second.

Don't like having to hit END everytime I boot though...

Did some searching, recommended I upgrade to v2.5 RR Bios and also disable Int13 and EBDA reallocation. Ok, do that. Now...  The first RR Bios comes up, shows me a 80GB and 160GB drive, neither of which are on the same controller, and continues onto the second RR Bios. This then shows me the same two drives and boots into unRaid. Again, using preclear utility, I can see all five disks fine. Very weird.

Going to reboot a few times and see of the RR Bios figures themselves out...

Does anyone else have expirence with these controllers? PCI-E x1, 4 port SATAII units...

Thanks,

Shawn

An update this morning. Ran preclear on two of the 5 disks attached to the RocketRaid controllers - both these were on Cont #1. Rebooted and now.... I see two RR BIOS screens, both with the previous two drives and the two newly cleared drives. Then I remembered, the 80Gb and 160GB drives were in a previous unRaid test box I had and just put them in this one here for testing the controller. I assume once I preclear the remaining drive, it will show up. Running that now to see now that all 5 drives should be detected, will the RR Bios screens show me all 5 or now split them between the controller Bios screens like I think they should be...

Well all is huming along nicely tonight. Finished the preclear on the last of the 5 disks and also added one to the array and formatted. All went fine. Then did a reboot. Both RR Bios screens show all 5 drives now. System booted up fine and normal.

Using PCI Info, I can see both controllers are using the same IRQ but different memory segments and I/O ports. That probably why I see all the drives on each controller. Going to eventually add another PCI controller and PCI-E x4 (to get an additional 8 ports). Maybe I will stay away from High Point RocketRaid for those two.

Whaler_99:

Could you give more specifications? I am running ubuntu 10.4 LTS and although am able to override the problem as you are (by pushing end), I have so far not been able to access anything else (int 13) to disable the bios for showing up. I think this is due to the fact that I have been unable to install the drivers...

Thanks!

I had to download the BIOS update and run it from a DOS bootable disk. (BTW, in this day and age, you know how hard it is to get a DOS bootable disk? ).  As part of the update you can change various settings, including disbale INT13 and the other one. This is the only way to change them on the 2300 cards. Once I did that, everything was fine. I did not need to install any specific drivers for unRaid to pickup the card or the disks.

I can check when I get home tonight and send you the filesI have if need be.

Shawn

I had to download the BIOS update and run it from a DOS bootable disk. (BTW, in this day and age, you know how hard it is to get a DOS bootable disk? ).

My solution to that dilemma has been a DOS bootable USB stick.  Not too hard to do (I googled it at the time).  There's something quite cool about a DOS boot device that's as fast as a stick and can hold a gig or so of files.  Of course, I still have a box of floppies in reserve.

Shawn,

at what speed are these preclears running ?

what is the general speed writing straight to the array ?

just considering buying one of these as i can get them pretty cheap here in Thailand (cheap as to compared to import a BR10i or a supermicro that i can not find here for a good price (br10i costs me 19000 Bath/32bath=+-600US$and a supermicro i need to pay nearly 250US$ with shipping costs without import taxes and god knows how much that will be))

I have four drives running off these cards (split 2x2 right now) and have had no issues with writting to the array. What slows me down is parity calculations as I write to the system.  As for pre_clear, no idea. All my pre_clear up to now have been off the mobo connecters. I will hook one up later today though and run a pre_clear on a disk and get you the numbers.

Cheers,

Shawn

Started one yesterday, still running as of this morning. Ran it on a Hitachi 5K300 2TB drive. Wasn't done before I left so will post the logs when I get home, but gauging from the % looks like be right around 24hrs, exactly what I get with the onboard SATA ports. And I was streaming a movie last night off a disk on the same controller, just to add some "realism" to the test.

Shawn

Here we go...

================================================================== 1.9
=                unRAID server Pre-Clear disk /dev/sdf
=               cycle 1 of 1, partition start on sector 64
= Disk Pre-Clear-Read completed                                 DONE
= Step 1 of 10 - Copying zeros to first 2048k bytes             DONE
= Step 2 of 10 - Copying zeros to remainder of disk to clear it DONE
= Step 3 of 10 - Disk is now cleared from MBR onward.           DONE
= Step 4 of 10 - Clearing MBR bytes for partition 2,3 & 4       DONE
= Step 5 of 10 - Clearing MBR code area                         DONE
= Step 6 of 10 - Setting MBR signature bytes                    DONE
= Step 7 of 10 - Setting partition 1 to precleared state        DONE
= Step 8 of 10 - Notifying kernel we changed the partitioning   DONE
= Step 9 of 10 - Creating the /dev/disk/by* entries             DONE
= Step 10 of 10 - Verifying if the MBR is cleared.              DONE
= Disk Post-Clear-Read completed                                DONE
Disk Temperature: 27C, Elapsed Time:  25:38:15
========================================================================1.9
==  Hitachi HDS5C3020ALA632    ML0221F306620D
== Disk /dev/sdf has been successfully precleared
== with a starting sector of 64
============================================================================
No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW

0 sectors were pending re-allocation before the start of the preclear.
0 sectors were pending re-allocation after pre-read in cycle 1 of 1.
0 sectors were pending re-allocation after zero of disk in cycle 1 of 1.
0 sectors are pending re-allocation at the end of the preclear,
    the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change.
0 sectors had been re-allocated before the start of the preclear.
0 sectors are re-allocated at the end of the preclear,
    the number of sectors re-allocated did not change.
root@Tower:/boot#

And an attachement with the preclear and smart reports in case you wanted to look.

Shawn

pre_clear_data.zip