Promise Technology FastTrack 378 Storage Driver

Promise Technology FastTrack 378 Driver. I prebuilt this Promise FastTrack 378 RAID driver for use with the Slackware Linux v10.1 Installation CD. This is tested for RAID mode only! It may work for non-RAID mode, but I haven't tested that.

Copy the "ft3xx.o" file from the "nosmp" directory to a floppy. The floppy must be in EXT2 Linux format (limitation of install CD's).

Boot the Slackware Linux Installation CD. Make sure to boot one of the SCSI boot images, like "SCSI.S".

Create the directory "/lib/modules/2.4.29/kernel/drivers/scsi" (you can because it's a ramdisk!). Mount the floppy with "mount /dev/fd0 /floppy". Copy the "fta3xx.o" file to the "scsi" directory. Then load the module with "insmod ft3xx". The device will be "/dev/sda".

Un-mount the floppy with "umount /floppy".

Now you can create partitions and install source.

Use "fdisk /dev/sda" or "cfdisk /dev/sda".

WARNING: "reiserfs" does not work with this driver on large disks (around 300GB). I recommend using the "ext3" file system.

Copy the "fta3xx.o" file to the "scsi" directory under "/lib" for your boot disk partition.

Use "chroot" to make your new disk the root. Mount the "proc" device with "mount -t proc proc /proc".

To make your hard disk bootable you must create a special compressed ramdisk boot image "/boot/initrd.gz".

Read the information about the "mkinitrd" command.

You will need to do something like this "mkinitrd -c -r /dev/sda1 -f ext3 -m ft3xx"

If you made the SCSI and file-system loadable modules, you need to add them in the command "mkinitrd -c -r /dev/sda1 -f ext3 -m scsi_mod:ft3xx:sd_mod:jbd:ext3".

Then add this to your "lilo.conf" file: "initrd = /boot/initrd.gz".

Add that to the boot entry for your system. Use the "lilo" command to install the boot block (/proc must be mounted!)

You must do all of this before you attempt to boot the new system, or you won't have access to disks on the RAID controller.

If you compile your own kernel, it is a good idea to recompile the driver. I provided a pre-compiled "smp" (Multi-CPU) version of the driver but it's better to compile your own.

This is not a GNU released driver, and you will get warnings when you load it. You can ignore the warnings. Promise only provided partial source. Be careful not to delete the "ftlib.o" file. You can avoid that by putting the driver in "/usr/src/ft3xx" and NOT under the "/usr/src/linux" directory. This driver will probably work with other versions of Linux if you recompile it. It can't be built into the kernel. It can only be a loadable module.