LP2000r RAID (NetRAID-2M) issues under Linux

[MattBruce]

There are 6 disks set up as a single RAID 5 array. My boot CD's (I tried Gentoo and OpenSuse) can detect the array as /dev/sda, and can write partition tables to the array, but when I try to create a filesystem and then run a check on the filesystem it returns bad. The controller works under Windows Server 2003, and all evidence says that it should work under Linux. At this point I'm thinking that maybe I have a hardware misconfiguration under NetRAID Express Tools. Anyone who can help me troubleshoot the problem?

[Hans-Jürgen Lange]

Hello,

I am not familiar with the LP2000r but have installed Linux on a LH4 and LH6000 and they both have Netraid RAID controllers.

Normaly there should be no difference between Windows and linux on how to handle the RAID controller.
But I have found that some of the Linux kernel versions have problems with heavy load on the raid controller, as you will have on filesystem creation.
If the RAID controller is nearly the same as in the LH4 then you can setup the RAID itself as Cached-IO and Direct-IO. On Linux you will have best performance if you use Direct-IO. This may help you to prevent the load problem.
And you should download a recent kernel version and compile it for your system. So you have the most up-to-date drivers for your system.
Iam a fan of the slackware distribution. Did you ever tried this one. I read that people sometimes have problems installing RH/SUSE/debian on HP NetRAID machines. With slackware I never had such problems. But if you try, dont use riserfs on installation.

I hope you can get some help out of my writing.

BR