SMB kernel with FastTRak 150 SX4 controller does not write partition table

From: Frank Wetzels (frank_at_gletsjermeer.net)
Date: 12/02/03 

Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2003 18:20:46 +0100

All,

I know this problem occurs more often, but i cannot find the solution:
My system is a dual processor SUSE 8.2 Linux based machine with a
FastTrak 150 SX4 RAID controller provided with 4 x 160Gbyte MAxtor disks.
I downloaded the fasttrak driver from promise installed, no problem.
The controller + discs can be seen. I want to configure RAID 5, but for
the sake of problem solving i configured everything JBOD. So, i have
besides an existing SCSI disk, /dev/sd[bcde] approx. 160Gbyte each.
Now fdisk /dev/sdb gives me the following:

root@two:/tmp[50] fdisk /dev/sdb
Device contains neither a valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel
Building a new DOS disklabel. Changes will remain in memory only,
until you decide to write them. After that, of course, the previous
content won't be recoverable.

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 19929.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
   (e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by w(rite)

Command (m for help):

The latter remark "Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will be corrected by
w(rite)" does not scar me off, because by writing the partition table to
disc should solve this.

However, defining a partition table and writing the table to disc does
NOT happen. After dwriting and exiting fdisk and list the partition table
(fdisk -l /dev/sdb) it appears that there is no partition table at all.
So, nothing get written to disc.

Am i missing something here?

Btw: The FasTrak 150SX4 has no need for a software RAID kernel additions.
Any configuration appears as a disk, all the mirroring, striping and
parity is done by the controller.

Regards,
Frank

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