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               Mylex DAC960 PCI RAID Controller Driver for Linux

                        Version 2.0.0 for Linux 2.0.36

                        Version 2.1.0 for Linux 2.1.130

                              BETA TEST RELEASE 3

                               23 November 1998

                               Leonard N. Zubkoff

                               Dandelion Digital

                               lnz@dandelion.com

           Copyright 1998 by Leonard N. Zubkoff 

                                 INTRODUCTION

Mylex, Inc. designs and manufactures a variety of high performance PCI RAID

controllers based on the Intel i960 processor.  Mylex Corporation is located at

34551 Ardenwood Blvd., Fremont, California 94555, USA and can be reached at

510/796-6100 or on the World Wide Web at http://www.mylex.com.  Mylex RAID

Technical Support can be reached by electronic mail at support@mylex.com, by

Voice at 510/608-2400, or by FAX at 510/745-7715.  Contact information for

offices in Europe and Japan is available on the Web site.

The latest information on Linux support for DAC960 PCI RAID Controllers, as

well as the most recent release of this driver, will always be available from

my Linux Home Page at URL "http://www.dandelion.com/Linux/".

Bug reports should be sent via electronic mail to "lnz@dandelion.com".  Please

include with the bug report the complete configuration messages reported by the

driver at startup, along with any subsequent system messages relevant to the

controller's operation, and a detailed description of your system's hardware

configuration.

Please consult the DAC960 documentation for detailed information regarding

installation and configuration of the controllers.  This document primarily

provides information specific to the Linux DAC960 support.

                                DRIVER FEATURES

The DAC960 is supported solely as a high performance RAID controller, not as an

interface to arbitrary SCSI devices.  The Linux DAC960 driver operates at the

block device level, the same level as the SCSI and IDE drivers.  Unlike other

RAID controllers currently supported on Linux, the DAC960 driver is not

dependent on the SCSI subsystem, and hence avoids all the complexity and

unnecessary code that would be associated with an implementation as a SCSI

driver.  The DAC960 driver is designed for as high a performance as possible

with no compromises or extra code for compatibility with lower performance

devices.

The DAC960 driver is architected to support up to 8 controllers per system.

Each DAC960 controller can support up to 45 disk drives on 3 channels.  The

drives installed on a controller are divided into one or more "Drive Groups",

and then each Drive Group is subdivided further into 1 to 32 "Logical Drives".

Each Logical Drive has a specific RAID Level and caching policy associated with

it, and it appears to Linux as a single block device.  Logical Drives are

further subdivided into up to 7 partitions through the normal Linux and PC disk

partitioning schemes.  Logical Drives are also known as "System Drives", and

Drive Groups are also called "Packs".  Both terms are in use in the Mylex

documentation; I have chosen to standardize on the more generic "Logical Drive"

and "Drive Group".

DAC960 RAID disk devices are named in the style of the Device File System

(DEVFS).  The device corresponding to Logical Drive D on Controller C is

referred to as /dev/rd/cCdD, and the partitions are called /dev/rd/cCdDp1

through /dev/rd/cCdDp7.  For example, partition 3 of Logical Drive 5 on

Controller 2 is referred to as /dev/rd/c2d5p3.  Note that unlike with SCSI

disks the device names will not change in the event of a disk drive failure.

The DAC960 driver is assigned major numbers 48 - 55 with one major number per

controller.  The 8 bits of minor number are divided into 5 bits for the Logical

Drive and 3 bits for the partition.

                     SUPPORTED DAC960 PCI RAID CONTROLLERS

The following list comprises the supported DAC960 PCI RAID Controllers as of

the date of this document.  It is recommended that anyone purchasing a Mylex

PCI RAID Controller not in the following table contact the author beforehand to

verify that it is or will be supported.

AcceleRAID 250 (DAC960PTL-1)

            Uses onboard Symbios SCSI chips on certain motherboards

            Also includes one onboard Wide Ultra-2/LVD SCSI channel

            66MHz Intel i960RD RISC Processor

            4MB/8MB/16MB/32MB/64MB/128MB ECC EDO Memory

AcceleRAID 200 (DAC960PTL-0)

            Uses onboard Symbios SCSI chips on certain motherboards

            Includes no onboard SCSI channels

            66MHz Intel i960RD RISC Processor

            4MB/8MB/16MB/32MB/64MB/128MB ECC EDO Memory

DAC960PJ    1/2/3 Wide Ultra SCSI-3 Channels

            66MHz Intel i960RD RISC Processor

            4MB/8MB/16MB/32MB/64MB/128MB ECC EDO Memory

DAC960PG    1/2/3 Wide Ultra SCSI-3 Channels

            33MHz Intel i960RP RISC Processor

            4MB/8MB ECC EDO Memory

DAC960PU    1/2/3 Wide Ultra SCSI-3 Channels

            Intel i960CF RISC Processor

            2MB/4MB/8MB/16MB/32MB EDRAM or DRAM Memory (max 8MB EDRAM)

DAC960PD    1/2/3 Wide Fast SCSI-2 Channels

            Intel i960CF RISC Processor

            2MB/4MB/8MB/16MB/32MB EDRAM or DRAM Memory (max 8MB EDRAM)

DAC960PL    1/2/3 Wide Fast SCSI-2 Channels

            Intel i960 RISC Processor

            2MB/4MB/8MB/16MB/32MB DRAM Memory

For the DAC960PJ and DAC960PG, firmware version 4.06-0-00 or above is required.

This firmware version is available from http://www.dandelion.com/Linux/ and

will eventually be available from http://www.mylex.com as well.  It has been

released by Mylex and is provided with new controllers, but it has not yet

appeared on their support web pages as of the date of this document.

For the DAC960PU, DAC960PD, and DAC960PL, firmware version 3.51-0-04 or above

required.  This firmware version is available from http://www.mylex.com.

Note that earlier revisions of the DAC960PU, DAC960PD, and DAC960PL controllers

were delivered with version 2.xx firmware.  Version 2.xx firmware is not

supported by this driver and no support is envisioned.  Contact Mylex RAID

Technical Support to inquire about upgrading controllers with version 2.xx

firmware to version 3.51-0-04.  Upgrading to version 3.xx firmware requires

installation of higher capacity Flash ROM chips, and not all DAC960PD and

DAC960PL controllers can be upgraded.

Please note that not all SCSI disk drives are suitable for use with DAC960

controllers, and only particular firmware versions of any given model may

actually function correctly.  Similarly, not all motherboards have a BIOS that

properly initializes the AcceleRAID 250, AcceleRAID 200, DAC960PJ, and DAC960PG

because the Intel i960RD/RP is a multi-function device.  If in doubt, contact

Mylex RAID Technical Support (support@mylex.com) to verify compatibility.

                CONTROLLER CONFIGURATION AND STATUS MONITORING

The DAC960 Online Configuration Utilities are not yet available on Linux but

will hopefully be supported in the future.  The AcceleRAID 250, AcceleRAID 200,

DAC960PJ, and DAC960PG controllers can generally be configured using the DAC960

Configuration Utility included in the controller's BIOS ROM and available via

Alt-R during BIOS initialization.  Older DAC960 controllers required the DACCF

utility that runs from a DOS boot disk.

The status of each DAC960 controller is queried every 7 seconds by the Linux

driver to verify that no problems have been detected, and any changes in status

are reported through appropriate kernel messages.  The following log excerpt

details the process of the controller automatically rebuilding onto a spare

drive when a disk drive failed.  In this example, 4 drives in a SAF-TE

enclosure were grouped into a Drive Group which was then divided into 3 Logical

Drives configured as RAID-5, RAID-5, and RAID-6.  An additional identical drive

was installed as a "Standby" or "Hot Spare" to provide for automatic

rebuilding.  The first two messages are the result of the standby drive being

removed, the third message is a result of it being reinstalled, and the

remaining messages are the result of the first drive being removed to force an

automatic rebuild.

DAC960#0: Physical Drive 0:4 killed because it was removed

DAC960#0: Physical Drive 0:4 is now DEAD

DAC960#0: Physical Drive 0:4 is now STANDBY

DAC960#0: Logical Drive 0 (/dev/rd/c0d0) is now CRITICAL

DAC960#0: Logical Drive 1 (/dev/rd/c0d1) is now CRITICAL

DAC960#0: Logical Drive 2 (/dev/rd/c0d2) is now CRITICAL

DAC960#0: Physical Drive 0:0 killed because of timeout on SCSI command

DAC960#0: Physical Drive 0:0 is now DEAD

DAC960#0: Physical Drive 0:0 killed because it was removed

DAC960#0: Physical Drive 0:4 is now WRITE-ONLY

DAC960#0: REBUILD IN PROGRESS: Logical Drive 0 (/dev/rd/c0d0) 9% completed

DAC960#0: REBUILD IN PROGRESS: Logical Drive 0 (/dev/rd/c0d0) 45% completed

DAC960#0: REBUILD IN PROGRESS: Logical Drive 0 (/dev/rd/c0d0) 90% completed

DAC960#0: REBUILD IN PROGRESS: Logical Drive 1 (/dev/rd/c0d1) 28% completed

DAC960#0: REBUILD IN PROGRESS: Logical Drive 1 (/dev/rd/c0d1) 66% completed

DAC960#0: REBUILD IN PROGRESS: Logical Drive 2 (/dev/rd/c0d2) 62% completed

DAC960#0: REBUILD IN PROGRESS: Logical Drive 2 (/dev/rd/c0d2) 82% completed

DAC960#0: REBUILD COMPLETED SUCCESSFULLY

DAC960#0: Logical Drive 0 (/dev/rd/c0d0) is now ONLINE

DAC960#0: Logical Drive 1 (/dev/rd/c0d1) is now ONLINE

DAC960#0: Logical Drive 2 (/dev/rd/c0d2) is now ONLINE

DAC960#0: Physical Drive 0:4 is now ONLINE

                              DRIVER INSTALLATION

This distribution was prepared for Linux kernel version 2.0.36 or 2.1.130.

To install the DAC960 RAID driver, you may use the following commands,

replacing "/usr/src" with wherever you keep your Linux kernel source tree:

  cd /usr/src

  tar -xvzf DAC960-2.0.0-Beta3.tar.gz (or DAC960-2.1.0-Beta3.tar.gz)

  mv README.DAC960 DAC960.[ch] linux/drivers/block

  patch -p0 < DAC960.patch

  cd linux

  make config

  make depend

  make zImage (or bzImage)

Then install "arch/i386/boot/zImage" or "arch/i386/boot/bzImage" as your

standard kernel, run lilo if appropriate, and reboot.

To create the necessary devices in /dev, the "make_rd" script included in

"DAC960-Utilities.tar.gz" from http://www.dandelion.com/Linux/ may be used.

Also included in this archive are patches to LILO 20 and FDISK v2.8 that add

DAC960 support, along with statically linked executables of LILO and FDISK.

This modified version of LILO will allow booting from a DAC960 controller

and/or mounting the root file system from a DAC960.  Unfortunately, installing

directly onto a DAC960 will be problematic until the various Linux distribution

vendors update their installation utilities.

                      DAC960 ANNOUNCEMENTS MAILING LIST

The DAC960 Announcements Mailing List provides a forum for informing Linux

users of new driver releases and other announcements regarding Linux support

for DAC960 PCI RAID Controllers.  To join the mailing list, send a message to

"dac960-announce-request@dandelion.com" with the line "subscribe" in the

message body.