This is to explain the simplest way to get the Highpoint RocketRAID 2640x4 RAID controller card to work with Ubuntu. I will get to the problems I faced later, let me just say that it is a sad state of affairs when you have to recommend others NOT to use the driver installer that is posted on the manufacturers web site. Building the driver on your system means no worries about the kernel version not matching the driver.
I chose Ubuntu 10.04 because it is the most recent long term support version.
Hardware:
- Highpoint RocketRAID 2640x4 RAID controller
- two Patriot TorqX 64GB SSD drives on the RAID controller
- one Patriot TorqX 64GB SSD drive on the mainboard SATA controller for the OS
Steps:
- Install the card in your system and connect the SATA drives.
- Boot the system, and a new BIOS setup screen will come up that is controlled by the RAID controller
-Hit CTRL-H to get into the RAID controller setup.
- Create a RAID array
- Reboot
Note that you can setup a RAID array without installing any drivers.
Next:
- Start Ubuntu
- Verify that the hardware is present and recognized:
- Download the source code archive rr264x-linux-src-v1.3-legacy_single-101203-0910.tar.gz from
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_ne...0_download.htm
(It is called "Linux Open Source" and the link is v1.3)
- Now install the build environment
Code:
sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall
- change into the source directory:
Code:
cd rr2640-linux-src-v1.3-legacy_single/product/rr2640/linuxls
- Build the driver
- Load the driver
Code:
sudo modprobe rr26xx
- Verify that the driver is loaded
If everything went well, you can now use gparted to verify that a new volume is available (on my system, it is /dev/sdb).
- use gparted to create a partition table and a partition
- add an according line to /etc/fstab:
Code:
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/raid ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
- create a mount location
Code:
sudo mkdir /mnt/raid
- change permissions to your username:
Code:
sudo chown -R username:username /mnt/raid
- mount the new volume
Code:
sudo mount /mnt/raid
You should now be able to use the RAID array like any other storage.
The manufacturer offers a GUI to control the RAID array, and that is where the problems start. There are only RPMs, no deb packages, and when you convert the RPMs to deb's with alien as suggested, you end up with broken packages.
More info on this:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=10712667
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1608698
Once it works, the performance is pretty good: 200 MB/s read, and between 100-200 MB/s write. An SSD-RAID server for Christmas!
Bookmarks