Is it possible to boot Linux with Adaptec Serial ATA II RAID 1420SA (raid1)?

Question

linux

Hello I came across

a mysterious Adaptec Serial ATA II RAID 1420SA device. I plugged it into the server, where there is only SATA-I interface support, connected 2 hard drives, made a raid-1 controller BIOS (mirror).

First I installed win2003 sp2 - everything is as usual, F6 - a disk with drivers - installation, everything is fine.

Then it was necessary to demolish win and install Linux, and then the riddles started:

I start installing SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 ( it says on the adapter website that this Linux is supported by the device).

The built-in sata_mv driver loaded immediately, showed me these 2 hard drives separately, and the adapter driver wrote that it was not licensed by the novel, and did not boot.

In general, I have installed Linux on 1 of the hard drives so far :)

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, and someone knows the correct sequence for installing Linux on this raid array?

Please write what Linux and installation steps.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

check how the raid is assembled, start from a sd / flash drive and see what devices it sees?
because it should see the raid separately, and the screws themselves for monitoring separately. carefully step by step throughout the installation. You may need to download drivers separately.

Answer 2

if the driver was from a CD - try to download from the off site, you should not swear at the license

Answer 3

This controller - the so-called HostRaid - is semi-software.
In Windows, raid emulation is done in the driver. The driver reads from the controller BIOS what arrays are there and emulates them. Linux driver - proprietary, binary and shell. The binary is compiled strictly for several Linuxes, I tried to raise it on one of the specified Linuxes - without success.
In general, the essence of the topic is not general advice, but what if someone has already danced with this controller and has more successful experience than me :)

Answer 4

www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/sata/sataii/aar-1420sa/ immediately offer to get a driver for your OS. You didn't say anything about the slip driver procedure, so I'm guessing you missed using it.

Answer 5

I figured it out: when installing SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 - it was necessary to write “broken_modules = sata_mv” without quotes in the launch parameters - thus the controller is not blocked by this standard sata_mv driver.
And one more thing - adapter drivers come in the form of rpm and in the form of an img file. Rpm - I didn’t figure out how to give it to him during the installation process, but I installed vfdd (a virtual flop drive) from .img on another computer, fed it an image, and copied everything I found on the floppy to a USB flash drive (a target server without a flop drive).
In general, before starting the installation of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, I wrote “broken_modules = sata_mv” without quotes in the options line, pressed F5 - chose Drivers-> Yes. And then, at the next stage, he pointed to a flash drive - the drivers pulled up from there and then a raid was found, and everything seems to be fine.
Maybe someone will come in handy.
Thanks to everyone who signed up :)