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I have DIYed an 1U server with [ASUS Z8NA-D6] motherboard, PIKE 6480 extended RAID card, and four SAS hard disk. And I can find this extended card's module in the linux kernel called mvsas. But fail to be detected by the debian system in the installing stage.

I'm trying to install Debian-stable on this server but only find three independent hard disk but not one virtual disk, after I have set RAID 5 for these three disk in the BIOS.

I'm sure that the virtual RAID 5 disk is created successfully, because I can find only one entry in the 'BIOS boot' Menu.

So that the question is: is that the driver module of Marvel SE886480(The CPU of PIKE 6480) can be truly probed by the kernel and active in the installing stage? How?

By the way, I can find the kernel module mvsas in my existing debian instance:

# locate mvsas
/lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/mvsas
/lib/modules/2.6.32-5-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/mvsas/mvsas.ko
/lib/modules/3.2.0-1-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/mvsas
/lib/modules/3.2.0-1-amd64/kernel/drivers/scsi/mvsas/mvsas.ko
ruohanc
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1 Answers1

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I can not speak specifically about this controller, however I have experience with various (raid) controllers based on marvel and other chipsets.

In my experience when you configure a raid in a cheap raid controller it's often some kind of software based implementation and not a "true" hardware raid. I am not sure if that's the case with your card. But it may be food for thought to consider just configuring the drives as independent drives and set up the raid in linux using mdadm. This will also gain you the ability to configure a 3 disk raid10. See: How to create a bootable redundant Debian system with a 3 or 4 (or more) disk software raid10?

In addition it is my experience that when the kernel only recognises the disks as independent disks and not as a raid, even though it's configured as such in the bios, there is not much you can do, besides trying to find the newest driver. It's most likely just the limitations of the driver, caused by lacking or no developer information by the maufacturer.

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