Highpoint RocketRaid 1640 on Debian/Linux

[gilthanaz]

[Problems]
I was trying to get a HP RR 1640 to run with SuSE and Debian, and failed on both in the beginning. The behaviour was weird overall, from not detecting any disks to detecting one disk or nothing....

Then, when trying to compile the driver from the HP homepage, i ran into another error, when it would not find a .h file in the kernel source directory.

When i finally made it to get the module (hpt374.o) to compile, on insmod i got timeouts on all sd* devices (sda,sdb...) after it was checking the Partition tables. The driver loaded (with warnings), but did disable the drives.


[Solutions]

1. The driver

You can download a driver from the Highpoint homepage. It is known to work with 2.4 kernels, but should also work for 2.6

To build this module, you must compile it with the kernel source (if you never built a kernel before, install the source package for the kernel your distro is using, and find out where they are stored). If you do this without ever doing a 'make config' (or 'make menuconfig', ...) before, it will miss some .h files, and the compile will fail.

Follow the readme of the driver from HP, and you should be able to get this module compiled. It's name will be hpt374.o


2. Make sure your Kernel has no other HP driver compiled into it. The readme of the driver package from the HP homepage also states exactly which drivers must not be in the kernel in order for the module to work. If you ignore this, it might result in two drivers claiming one device, and one will lose ...


3. When i insmodded the driver the first time, it would load and try to assign the disks to /dev/sd*, but failed with timeouts and busresets. It took me a while to find out why...

In the BIOS of this Motherboard, you had to set the Boot Sequence for the Controllers (not the boot sequence for devices) to 'SCSI/IDE', instead of 'IDE/SCSI". If this setting is wrong, the IDE controllers will initialize, but the SATA HP Controller won't (whyever..).

The insmod of the driver module will fail if you don't see the HP RR 1640 Bios searching for attached disks on bootup. Once you see the controller finding its stuff, and your system boots normaly, you should be able to insmod the compiled module. It should whine (if the disks are new) that it can't read the partition table, but that is no problem for those who can use 'fdisk', 'cfdisk', or any other partitioner. The disks will be emulated SCSI Devices, so they will be assigned to /dev/sd(n).

Partition, Format, have fun using it. Dont forget, if you want to set up Mirroring, Striping, JBOD, or anything alike - you have to do that first in the Controller BIOS in setup. A RAID set will, depending on what kind, show up as one SCSI device.

[^rooker]

*sigh*

Unfortunately, the problems Gil had with this controller and harddrive are probably NOTHING compared to what our future will be:
CPRM protected drives.


Short:
The party's over. If they manage to establish this properly, installing new HDDs in a computer, planning to move data from the old disks to the new one - ouch...


My absolute favorite quote on this subject (sad, but true) is:

Where were you when they copy-protected the hardware, Daddy?

[gilthanaz]

As usual, there will be a way around. Hacked firmware, hacked drivers, whatever.

If not, they can suck my nuts, and i store a million good old DVDs in the cellar, + some backup DVD-R/RW drives and compatible hardware.

[^rooker]

Sorry Gil, but that's a VERY naive point of view - that's a combination of questionable statements:

1) "License plate? pah! I can screw mine off in 10 seconds!"
2) "Ah what the hell, I'll stick to Win 3.11 for the rest of my life"


and now THINK:

- Driving around without a license plate? How long will that work out?
- Mount your USB stick under Win 3.11.... or better: Run WoW...

[gilthanaz]

/me points to the "As usual, there will be a way around. Hacked firmware, hacked drivers, whatever"-line.

Then i'll play my favourite games on emulators, dont buy new games, and use linux for my desktop. Because if it wasn't for gaming, i wouldn't use windows much Besides there sure are about 2 Million old games i havent played yet ...

[^rooker]

*sigh*

I'm too tired to argue on that subject anymore.

but short:
- If you can't open your music/videos/whatever under a certain OS, that certain OS is doomed to die. So, you'll be left without any choice...