Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 220850
3ware 9650SE not recognized by updated 3w-9xxx module
Last modified: 2007-11-16 20:14:55 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) Gecko/20061025 Firefox/1.5.0.8 Description of problem: The latest version of 3w-9xxx.c, from manufacturer 2.26.06.001, is supposed to support the 9650SE card. It is designed for newer than 2.6.9 kernels and will not compile on RHEL 4. I need to deploy a production server and don't want to buy an older controller as a work around. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 2.26.04.010 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Installer won't recognize drives. Actual Results: Expected Results: Additional info: Upstream maintainer: Tom Couch <linuxraid@amcc.com>
I got the install accomplished using version 2.26.05.006 of the 3w-9xxx kernel module I found on www.3ware.com. It looks like they have tested it with WS. I used it successfully with ES. It appears that the 2.26.05 series of 3w-9xxx is dedicated to kernel 2.6.9. 3ware's site also contains a 2.26.06 series which is supposed to work with newer kernels in fedora but I couldn't get them to work. The current update version of the kernel for RHEL4 contains version 2.26.04.010 of the module. If the next kernel update included 2.26.05.006 or a later version of the 2.26.05 series, then as far as I know, this bug would be closed.
Background that I've learned so far about this 3ware card: This new model (Installation Guide dated Oct 06) is not an incremental updated version, it's a version for pci-express where the next older model is for pci-x. I assume that this explains why the older driver isn't compatible; the connection bus is different. 3ware claims that their cards provide the highest capacity and performance, and best raid 6 performance. They might be accurate, I checked adaptec to see if they had a product I could purchase to work around the lack of driver problem and the biggest card they had was 8 ports with discrete cables (my server has 16 bays) wheras the 3ware product has 16 ports with 4 quad cables (their invention they say). They claim the write performance hit from raid 6 over raid 5 is only 15% with their cards (as opposed to 60% with others). The only problem I have with their product (since I got the driver to work) is that the management tool is not open source, boo. ( It works good though. )
Created attachment 145988 [details] patch to support the 3ware 9650SE SATA-RAID controller From Michael Benz and Patrick Pejack at AMCC.
Created attachment 145992 [details] touch up of the preceeding patch
This request was evaluated by Red Hat Product Management for inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux maintenance release. Product Management has requested further review of this request by Red Hat Engineering, for potential inclusion in a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Update release for currently deployed products. This request is not yet committed for inclusion in an Update release.
QE ack for RHEL4.5.
committed in stream U5 build 44. A test kernel with this patch is available from http://people.redhat.com/~jbaron/rhel4/
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem described in this bug report. This report is therefore being closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information on the solution and/or where to find the updated files, please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report if the solution does not work for you. http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2007-0304.html