[12:56] <spike> 'lo
[03:48] <shawarma> Can anyone recommend a good SATA RAID controller that works out of the box with Ubuntu?
[04:19] <fabbione> shawarma: 3ware are known to work but expensive
[04:19] <fabbione> shawarma: you get them at good price in rhus tho
[04:20] <shawarma> How expensive is expensive?
[04:28] <fabbione> shawarma: dunno.. i usually buy here shg.dk
[04:28] <fabbione> they are at least 10% cheap than here in Copenhagen
[04:29] <shawarma> ...and it works of the box? That's the most important factor, actually.
[04:29] <fabbione> shawarma: i don't have one myself.. most kernel developers told me that's one of the sanest
[04:35] <shawarma> fabbione: Just any 3ware? Or a specific one? I find it REALLY difficult figureing out if something is actually software raid or if it's real hardware raid.
[04:35] <shawarma> fabbione: WOW! Just noticed the price tag..
[04:35] <shawarma> fabbione: That is waaaay out of my league.
[04:36] <fabbione> shawarma: this is -server.. not -wannabecoolwithsatahwraid
[04:36] <shawarma> fabbione: But a RAID controller for 195 DKK doesn't sound too much like hardware RAID. :-)
[04:36] <fabbione> ;)
[04:36] <fabbione> nope
[04:37] <shawarma> fabbione: :-P It IS for a production server, but not quite within that budget range.
[04:37] <fabbione> well.. sucks to be you :P
[04:37] <fabbione> no seriously..
[04:37] <fabbione> i have a.. hmm let me check...
[04:38] <fabbione> 0000:00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
[04:38] <fabbione> i have this one on my mobo
[04:38] <fabbione> don't use it tho
[04:38] <fabbione> but the driver is loaded and doesn't crash :P
[04:38] <shawarma> I'm almost certain it's really software RAID.
[04:38] <fabbione> but why do you want hw raid?
[04:38] <fabbione> do you realize how many problems you have with hw raid?
[04:39] <shawarma> fabbione: I have one box with it that works just fine..
[04:39] <shawarma> fabbione: What would those problems be?
[04:39] <fabbione> that's not a good reason
[04:40] <fabbione> first of all hw raid is not standard.. you can't unplug disks from one controller and put them into another. you are binded to that brand and porbably model forever
[04:40] <shawarma> It's for a production server, and my customer wants hardware raid. The want RAID for the obvious reasons and they want it to be hardware raid to minimize the performance impact.
[04:40] <fabbione> software raid is very light on the CPU
[04:40] <fabbione> that's because they don't know ^^
[04:41] <shawarma> I'm curious.. If it's actually software raid.. why is a special driver needed? To fetch the RAID settings from the BIOS?
[04:41] <fabbione> with hw raid let say in a raid5 3 disks setup, if 2 disks die, you can wave good bye to the data (all of them)
[04:41] <shawarma> Of cours.e
[04:41] <fabbione> with software raid you can recover with a bit of luck
[04:41] <fabbione> ok.. there are 3 raid:
[04:42] <fabbione> - real hw raid
[04:42] <fabbione> - fake hw raid
[04:42] <fabbione> - real software raid (done at kernel level)
[04:42] <fabbione> the one you are asking about is the fake hw raid
[04:42] <fabbione> that seems to be hw
[04:42] <shawarma> right.
[04:42] <fabbione> but it's done via some device mapper tricks
[04:42] <fabbione> you need a recent kernel .12 or higher
[04:42] <fabbione> and dmraid
[04:42] <fabbione> a tool to manage it
[04:43] <fabbione> gotta go now
[04:43] <fabbione> cya around or the 15th at e2e
[04:43] <shawarma> Sure. when is it?
[04:43] <shawarma> 14:00, right?
[04:43] <fabbione> i think so
[04:44] <fabbione> i will be there before that
[04:44] <fabbione> remember your GPG fingerprint and documents ;)
[04:44] <shawarma> Alright. See you there!
[04:44] <shawarma> Always.
[04:44] <shawarma> Never leave home without them. :-)
[04:48] <shawarma> Hmm... So if I'm going to have to settle with fake raid anyhow (1000$ for a true hardware SATA RAID controller is WAAAY out of my budget), pretty much any SATA controller will do just fine, right?
[04:54] <fabbione> if the SATA is only for storage and you boot from other disks, you are okish.. otherwise no
[04:54] <fabbione> you can't boot from fakeraid yet afaik
[04:55] <shawarma> I thought you were leaving? :-)
[04:58] <shawarma> fabbione: I'm ALMOST sure that you can...
[04:58] <shawarma> I believe I have a customer who did just that.
[04:58] <shawarma> No, wait. That was not "fake raid" but software raid.
[04:59] <fabbione> exactly
[04:59] <fabbione> you can boot from software raid
[05:03] <shawarma> fabbione: So the lesson is: Use software RAID instead of fake raid?
[05:32] <IzzyCC> hey all
[05:34] <IzzyCC> anyone here mind helping me with an install for some $?
[05:34] <IzzyCC> im so frustrated right now ;)
[07:19] <troy> IzzyCC: explain your problem :)
[07:20] <IzzyCC> okie, *nix newbie here...
[07:20] <IzzyCC> installed ubuntu... then tried to remove php4/mysql4 and put in 5
[07:21] <IzzyCC> it "looked right" but yet still shows it using php4
[07:21] <IzzyCC> so now im ready to just start all over again
[07:21] <IzzyCC> and getting super frustrated
[07:21] <IzzyCC> id rather just throw a few dollars via paypal to someone to get me up and going than kept having to read fubared tutorial after tutorial
[07:58] <troy> IzzyCC: did you use the ubuntu packages for php and mysql?
[08:01] <troy> php5 is in the repositories, but mysql5 is not - 4.1 is however, and it'll work for everything I can think of
[08:03] <troy> so "sudo apt-get install php5 mysql-server-4.1 php5-mysql" should do it
[09:52] <shawarma> fabbione: ping?
[09:52] <fabbione> shawarma: pong?
[09:53] <shawarma> fabbione: Regarding the RAID thing... Can you in short explain what the advantages of fake raid over software raid are?
[09:54] <shawarma> fabbione: To me, it appears there are none.
[09:54] <fabbione> fake raid sucks.. i never said it has advantages over software :)
[09:55] <fabbione> i honestly prefer software > *
[09:55] <shawarma> fabbione: Even true hardware RAID?
[09:55] <fabbione> it depends from the hw raid
[09:56] <fabbione> let's put it this way..
[09:56] <fabbione> if you build a server with one raid controller, you lose
[09:56] <fabbione> (hardware)
[09:56] <fabbione> if you want redundancy, you need at least 2 raid controllers
[09:56] <fabbione> and most of them don't support sharing a disk on a chain
[09:57] <fabbione> so you still lose
[09:57] <shawarma> Heh.. Well, the chances of the mechanics or magnetic plates of a disk failing are surely higher than that of a RAID controller? But in principle, you're absolutely right.
[09:58] <fabbione> statics of that are sort of hairy
[09:58] <fabbione> i have seen both failing..
[09:58] <fabbione> so
[09:58] <fabbione> and tbh, once you get one single raid card on a server
[09:58] <fabbione> that's a half quality one
[09:58] <fabbione> i would rather trust more a better SATA controller without raid and use software raid
[09:59] <fabbione> i can tell you that software raid is chea during normal operations
[09:59] <shawarma> But a fake raid controller doesn't give any advantages over software raid, afaics. With fake raid, you're still doing software RAID, but paying for the fancy bios configuration interface.
[09:59] <fabbione> the code is uber optimized
[09:59] <shawarma> Yeah, I know. I remember looking at it right after 2.6 came out.
[09:59] <fabbione> no it doesn't. because you still use the kernel device-mapper to access the right blocks on the fake raid
[10:00] <shawarma> nah...it wasn't right after 2.6... It was right after they revamped the dm stuff.
[10:00] <shawarma> Well, some time ago, anyhow. :-)
[10:01] <fabbione> ehehe
[10:02] <shawarma> Well, this cleared up quite a few things. Thanks a bunch!
[10:02] <fabbione> no problem dude