Gdt Driver Parameters; Reservation Of Scsi Devices - Intel SRCU32 - RAID Controller User Manual

GDT Driver Parameters

Reservation of SCSI Devices

The reservation of SCSI devices becomes necessary if you want Direct Access Devices (for
example, hard drives, removable hard drives like IOMEGA or SyQuest, some MOs) to be directly
controlled by Linux and not the Intel RAID Controller SRCU32's firmware (for example, they are
not configured as host drives).
Reservation of SCSI devices is also called raw-service. In this case, the Intel RAID Controller
SRCU32 does not cache the data to/from the reserved SCSI device. This reservation is important
for removable hard drives. If they are controlled by the Intel RAID Controller SRCU32 and are a
host drive, a media change is very difficult.
Non Direct Access Devices like CD-ROMs, Streamers, DATs, etc. do NOT require a reservation.
CAUTION
The reservation of SCSI devices is only possible with not-initialized SCSI devices. (Use StorCon to
de-initialize an already initialized device.)
From driver version 1.10 on you can add the parameters for the reservation with the LILO append
command:
Excerpt of /etc/lilo.conf:
# End LILO global section
# Linux bootable partition config begins
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda2
label = Linux
append = "gdth=reserve_list:1,0,6,0"
# Linux bootable partition config ends
This "gdth" driver parameter reserves the SCSI device that is connected with Intel RAID Controller
SRCU32 1 (the second Intel RAID Controller SRCU32), SCSI Bus 0 (channel A), ID 6, LUN 0 for
Linux (raw service).
After each change
Driver parameters may also be entered at the LILO boot prompt, (for example:
gdth=reserve_list:1,0,6,0).
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in "/etc/lilo.conf"
LILO must be loaded once.
Intel RAID Controller SRCU32 User's Guide