Trouble setting up the NetRAID-4M card -- all drives on a single channel?

[Andy Dyckman]

All six of my 18.2GB dirves are on a single channel since that's how the hotswap bay is set up in the NetServer LC2000r... But, documentation for the NetRAID 4m says one cannot make containers out of drives on a shared channel. So how would I initialize these disks so I install Gentoo Linux? Thanks in advance.

[Andy Dyckman]

Is there something I failed to mention that'd warrant a response?

[Torsten.]

Hi Andy,

generally speaking a "shared bus/channel" means 2 SCSI initiators in a chain. In this case too, I guess. To connect your 6 drives seems like a default configuration to me.

[Andy Dyckman]

Yeah, that's why it confused me.

When I enter the BIOS (Ctrl+A at the card's POST) and try to select a container, it tells me I have none. When I go to make a container, it tells me I have "one or more uninitialized drives, blah blah". When I go to initialize drives, they all show up on channel 0. But, they're all in a magenta/lavender color and I can't select them. So that's the problem in more detail.

[koalaz · Accepted solution]

Hi, andy, I've had the same problem, and at last i've solved this part.
after Ctrl-A entered the BIOS, don't select container config first, but select scsi channel config first(i forget the exact name), and select the channel you use, to say channel 0, and you'll see "clustering" option, DISABLE it, hit esc to back main menu, and choose save the change.
Then go to container config, you'll find initial working.
if not, reboot after changing settings and try config container again, it work to me.
Wish this helps.

[Andy Dyckman]

It sure the heck did! It was all about clustering. Thank you SO much!