HighPoint RocketRAID

The information in this article has been deprecated. It may or may not be relevant for contemporary usage. Handle with care!

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The overlay referenced in this article has been abandoned by its author. These instructions may or may not work in recent times.

This guide assists with the installation of a RocketRAID card on Gentoo Linux.

Installation

Enabling the HPT-RR overlay

The HPT-RR overlay contains the necessary packages to easily install and configure a RocketRAID card.

Using eselect repository

Ensure that app-eselect/eselect-repository and dev-vcs/git are installed:

root #emerge --ask --noreplace app-eselect/eselect-repository dev-vcs/git

Then configure and sync the overlay:

root #eselect repository add RocketRAID git https://github.com/dsiggi/RocketRAID.git

root #emerge --sync RocketRAID

Using layman

The second method to enable the overlay is through layman. Edit /etc/layman/layman.cfg and add the overlay definition:

FILE /etc/layman/layman.cfgAt the overlay to the config

...
overlays  :
    https://api.gentoo.org/overlays/repositories.xml
    https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dsiggi/RocketRAID/master/overlays.xml
...

Next, synchronize the overlays and add the RocketRAID one (which is named RocketRAID):

root #layman -S

root #layman -a RocketRAID

It is of course also possible to clone the repository for a local overlay:

root #git clone https://github.com/dsiggi/RocketRAID.git

Building and installing the Linux kernel module

Depending on the hardware card, enable the right USE flag.

Then, install the sys-block/rocketraid package in order to automatically build and install the right kernel module:

root #emerge --ask rocketraid

Loading the kernel module

Load the newly built kernel module (example for the rr232x module):

root #modprobe rr232x

Validate that the hardware has been properly detected by reading through the dmesg output close after loading the module:

root #dmesg

...
[    2.499913] rr232x: module license 'Proprietary' taints kernel.
[    2.500453] rr232x:RocketRAID 232x controller driver v1.10 (Dec 24 2014 11:50:36)
[    2.500684] rr232x:adapter at PCI 3:4:0, IRQ 16
[    3.073130] rr232x:start channel [0,0]
[    3.073149] rr232x:start channel [0,1]
[    3.073167] rr232x:start channel [0,3]
[    3.424978] rr232x:channel [0,0] started successfully
[    3.785922] rr232x:channel [0,1] started successfully
[    4.156860] rr232x:channel [0,3] started successfully
[    4.498815] scsi host6: rr232x
...

If the module correctly found the hardware, then make sure that this module is automatically loaded at boot. This can be accomplished by adding it to the /etc/modules-load.d/raid.conf file.

Installing supporting software

There are a couple of software packages that provide additional support for the RocketRAID cards.

The sys-block/hptraidconf package provides configuration and monitoring support for the RocketRAID card. It requires a daemon running on the system, provided through the sys-block/hptsvr package. The client itself does not need to be installed on the system that has the RAID card in it.

Deploy the two packages:

root #emerge --ask hptsvr

root #emerge --ask hptraidconf

Configuration

To run the server, add the right hardware module to /etc/hptcfg:

root #echo "rr232x" > /etc/hptcfg

Now start the server:

root #/etc/init.d/hptsvr start

To start the server on every system boot, type in:

root #rc-update add hptsvr default

Administration

To administer the RAID card settings, connect to the server using the hptraidconf command.

The default username is RAID and the default password is hpt.

root #hptraidconf [-i server:port]

        HighPoint RAID Management Command Line Utility v3.3
Copyright (C) 2009 HighPoint Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
 
Login:RAID
Password:

After a successful login, a prompt will appear through which the administrative tasks can be executed.

HighPoint CLI>query arrays 1

ID:             1                   Name:           Storage             
Type:           RAID5               Status:         NORMAL              
Capacity(GB):   2000.25             BlockSize:      64k                 
SectorSize:     512B                CachePolicy:    WB                  
Progress:       --                  
ID      Capacity    MaxFree     Flag    Statue    ModelNumber
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1/1     1000.12     0           NORMAL  RAID      ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB
1/2     1000.12     0           NORMAL  RAID      ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB
1/4     1000.12     0           NORMAL  RAID      ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All supported commands are documented in the official documentation (.tgz).

Supported cards

Card	module
RocketRAID 1720	rr172x
RocketRAID 1740/1742	rr174x
RocketRAID 2210	rr2210
RocketRAID 2220/2224	rr222x
RocketRAID 2240	rr2240
RocketRAID 2314/2310/2302/2300	rr231x
RocketRAID 2322/2320	rr232x
RocketRAID 2340	rr2340
RocketRAID 2522	rr2522
RocketRAID 2644X4	rr2644
RocketRAID 2640X4/2640X1/2642	rr264x
RocketRAID 2680/2684	rr268x
RocketRAID 620/622	rr62x
RocketRAID 640/644	rr64x
RocketRAID 640L/644L/644LS/642L	rr64xl

Special thanks

Special thanks go to camper2 from ubuntuforums.org who wrote the patches for the kernel modules.

Also special thanks goes to dlder from forums.opensuse.org for the new patches for kernels >=4.7.