RocketRAID 1740 - 8.04

[pucenavel]

I've looked through every thread I can find looking for a solution to my issue. None of the discussions have been able to fully solve the issue, though each has helped to make some gains here and there.

Here is my situation:
AMD XP2700+ (i686 architecture)
Ubuntu 8.04 is installed and running quite happily on internal IDE drive - and I want to keep it that way
I have a RocketRAID 1740 controller card - PCI connected to (4) 1TB Drives
The RAID BIOS sees the drives and they are configured in two RAID5 arrays, one of 2TB and one of 1TB
I want to actually see these drives and, I don't know, maybe copy a file or two onto them.


Please help! I've got too much $$$ tied up in this. If I can't make Ubuntu work I will have to fall back to Windows (more $$$).


What I know:

RocketRAID 1740 is not expressly supported on Ubuntu, but there is a source code driver available on the Highpoint website - the latest version (today being 10/11/08) is 2.1-080710
The drives are NOT initialized - online manufacturer documentation states that redundant arrays are not initialized by the BIOS, but by the software
In attempting to get the driver loaded, I have actually gotten as far as building it, installing it and loading it. What I don't know is if anything has gone awry. The best I've been able to do is get the RAID card to beep (alarm indicating array failure), but the BIOS shows all drives as OK. I believe the driver has fully loaded because I am able to disable it under Hardware Drivers - which (thank god) stops the beeping after a reboot.

Do I need to figure out how to "initialize" the disks from the OS?

Highpoint has a link to a file that unpacks as *.rpm files (those are RedHat, right?). No luck trying to install - apt-get doesn't like them.

The command I used was

sudo apt-get install hptsvr-3.13-4.i586.rpm

Please - please - there must be someone out there who has already done this and can give me some clear step by step instructions.

[thinkdez]

I don't have a RAID card myself but as for the software you are trying to install RPM's as you stated are not installable by apt. That's because RPM's are for REDHAT flavor's of Linux ie REDHAT,SuSE,CENTOS etc. Debian based distributions such as Ubuntu use .deb files as packages. Don't give up though, there is a way you can get RPM's to work in Debian based distro's with alien.

Run the following to install alien:

sudo apt-get install alien

Next download the RPM file
Then to convert a rpm to a deb file use the following:

sudo alien <insert rpm file name here>

That should provide you with a .deb file that you should be able to install. To install run the following:

sudo dpkg -i <Insert .deb file that was created above>

I hope this helps you out.

[bvanaerde]

I've got the same RAID controller... managed to install it using the source files. But I have to run some scripts in order to make them visible in Ubuntu.

When I get home, I'll post here what I did.

[bvanaerde]

Sorry, I made a little howto, but can't find it anymore.
This might be even better though:
http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/China/bios_rr1740c.htm

Don't ask me why, but there are Ubuntu files on the Chinese website of HighPoint. Why can't they put them on the english pages too

[bvanaerde]

Ok, I got it working!
Those drivers found on the Chinese website (see my post above), didn't work here, probably because I'm using Ubuntu 8.10 64bit. But there are drivers for up to 8.04, so they might work for you.

This is what I did:
Download the opensource driver:
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/bi...ensourcedriver
Extract the files to a folder (I used: rr174x-linux-src-v2.1).
Then do this in the terminal:

cd rr174x-linux-src-v2.1/product/rr1740pm/linux
sudo make install

After a reboot, the RAID was loaded. I'm a bit surprised it was so simple...

dmesg | grep rr174x

gave me this:

[ 12.832738] rr174x:RocketRAID 174x controller driver v2.1.08.0710 (Feb 17 2009 21:43:21)
[ 12.832780] rr174x:adapter at PCI 5:2:0, IRQ 18
[ 13.401941] rr174x:start channel [0,0]
[ 13.403378] rr174x:start channel [0,1]
[ 13.404000] rr174x:start channel [0,2]
[ 13.404000] rr174x:start channel [0,3]
[ 13.608011] rr174x:[0 0] Start channel soft reset.
[ 13.608031] rr174x:[0 1] Start channel soft reset.
[ 13.608050] rr174x:[0 2] Start channel soft reset.
[ 13.608068] rr174x:[0 3] Start channel soft reset.
[ 13.916002] rr174x:channel [0,0] started successfully
[ 13.916002] rr174x:channel [0,1] started successfully
[ 13.916002] rr174x:channel [0,2] started successfully
[ 13.916002] rr174x:channel [0,3] started successfully
[ 14.269157] scsi16 : rr174x

I guess this will also work for 8.04.

[babeliak]

Great, this way it worked for me.Strange that manufacturers driver doesn't work and user has to use "make" on souce.

[bvanaerde]

I have yet to try this on 9.04, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
I saw that they updated their drivers page, a lot of version specific drivers are available now. They should work too.

Strange that manufacturers driver doesn't work

Mind that those opensource drivers are also from the manufacturer.

[babeliak]

true, but I had to use "make" like you did, since february they posted Ubuntu drivers on http://www.highpoint-tech.com, unfortunately they did NOT work for me (8.04 LTS, x86_64bit fresh install)
Now I have RAID webgui functional (converted using alien -d) and my new RAID5 seem alive Thanks for help
I'm totally new to Linux, will try now to set SAMBA and the rest for winXP stations

[bvanaerde]

Nice to know that the WebGUI also works, thanks for mentioning that

[Nebb]

Thanks to both of you for your posts i was able to get my 1740 highpoint up and working.

I did find it a bit difficult so I made a HOW TO for anyone else. Credit goes to everyone

1740 Rocket Raid HOWTO
By Ben Murray July 7th 2009

This is a basic how to install and setup a highpoint rocket
raid card 1740 with 4 sata hard drives and by no means perfect.


First get the driver from highpoint-tech for your distro.

# sudo mkdir /temp/dd
# sudo tar xzvf rr174x-yourdistro.tgz -C /tmp/dd
# cd /tmp/dd
# sudo sh install.sh


once install has finished

# sudo modprobe "XXXX" <--- your module name in this case rr174x

or ou can reboot the system but your module may not start so you may need to still do this.
after reboot

# sudo dmesg | grep rr174x

Should get something like this

[ 12.832738] rr174x:RocketRAID 174x controller driver v2.1.08.0710 (Feb 17 2009 21:43:21)
[ 12.832780] rr174x:adapter at PCI 5:2:0, IRQ 18
[ 13.401941] rr174x:start channel [0,0]
[ 13.403378] rr174x:start channel [0,1]
[ 13.404000] rr174x:start channel [0,2]
[ 13.404000] rr174x:start channel [0,3]
[ 13.608011] rr174x:[0 0] Start channel soft reset.
[ 13.608031] rr174x:[0 1] Start channel soft reset.
[ 13.608050] rr174x:[0 2] Start channel soft reset.
[ 13.608068] rr174x:[0 3] Start channel soft reset.
[ 13.916002] rr174x:channel [0,0] started successfully
[ 13.916002] rr174x:channel [0,1] started successfully
[ 13.916002] rr174x:channel [0,2] started successfully
[ 13.916002] rr174x:channel [0,3] started successfully
[ 14.269157] scsi16 : rr174x

Next assuming your raid array has been configured via high point bios (crtl-h on boot)
locate in /dev your raid drive in this case it was /dev/sdb .

so partion the raid drive

# sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

in the fdisk command use m for help pretty straight forward (google is you friend for fdisk)

after fdisk

# sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb1

and wait


configure system to mount volume when startup

modify the /etc/fstab to add the following line


/dev/sd"X" /mnt/raid ext3 defaults 0 0


("X" being your raid drive found in /dev i.e. /dev/sda1 or /dev/sdb1 so on)

/mnt/raid may need to be created or you could use another name

to make "raid" directory use:

# sudo mkdir /mnt/raid

thats all