Getting rid of RAID card "Press <ctrl-s> or F4 to enter RAID utility"

[Nick Rout]

I have a card that lspci describes as

02:00.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA
Raid II Controller (rev 01)
PCI-ID is 1095:3132.

On boot I get the message "Press <ctrl-s> or F4 to enter RAID utility"
which takes ages to time out.

Can anyone tell me how to get rid of this message? Google seems to
refer me to solutions which involve turning off raid support in the
bios, but as this is a discrete card, I can't see that working.

Not precisely a linux question, but the system is my mythtv server,
and although reboots are rare, when they are necessary it's because
something has gone wrong and usually the punters [1] want it running
again asap.

[1] aged 11 thru 15.

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[Wayne Rooney]

Post by Nick Rout
I have a card that lspci describes as
02:00.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA
Raid II Controller (rev 01)
PCI-ID is 1095:3132.
On boot I get the message "Press <ctrl-s> or F4 to enter RAID utility"
which takes ages to time out.
Can anyone tell me how to get rid of this message?

The message and timeout are going to be in the bios on the raid card, so press
ctrl-s or F4 and cautiously poke around in there, though I have the feeling
that you aren't going to have much luck adjusting them.

Wayne

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[Nick Rout]

Post by Wayne Rooney

Post by Nick Rout
I have a card that lspci describes as
02:00.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial ATA
Raid II Controller (rev 01)
PCI-ID is 1095:3132.
On boot I get the message "Press <ctrl-s> or F4 to enter RAID utility"
which takes ages to time out.
Can anyone tell me how to get rid of this message?

The message and timeout are going to be in the bios on the raid card, so press
ctrl-s or F4 and cautiously poke around in there, though I have the feeling
that you aren't going to have much luck adjusting them.

Should have said that I tried that and couldn't see anything obvious.

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[Volker Kuhlmann]

Post by Nick Rout
Should have said that I tried that and couldn't see anything obvious.

You're probably out of luck then. Check the card has a jumper to turn
off raid, but probably not if it's reasonably newish. I assume you're
only using it for its ide/sata capability because its raid capability is
a) useless b) annoying c) dangerous (same goes for all that promise
raid cr*p).

If you don't see a solution in the card bios or through a jumper your
only option is to treat the card as they should be treated - as
paperweights. IIRC replacements are <$50 if that's worth less than the
bother caused by the existing card.

Volker

[Michael Field]

Hi,

Post by Nick Rout
On boot I get the message "Press <ctrl-s> or F4 to enter RAID utility"
which takes ages to time out.
Can anyone tell me how to get rid of this message?

I'm not familiar with that card, but if it is a half decent RAID card (i.e. with embedded compute power), the delay is more likely to be the time spent initialising the RAID card, giving time for disks to spin up, scanning for disks and so on. If it is a dumb card, you may be better off to disable RAID functionality all together and mirror at the OS level - if the card ever dies what are the chances of getting a compatible card to replace it?

On a somewhat related thread, when the very large SATA drives were released IBM had to update its onboard RAID adapters with painfully long timeouts to allow for the longer time it took for the disks to spin up and become ready. You would update the firmware and then get really, really worried when the server never completed POST. The "on-hold" time with IBM support would usually be long enough that the machine would be booted when you got to talk to the engineer.

Mike



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[Nick Rout]

On Fri, Aug 12, 2011 at 10:37 AM, Michael Field

Post by Michael Field
Hi,

Post by Nick Rout
On boot I get the message "Press <ctrl-s> or F4 to enter RAID utility"
which takes ages to time out.
Can anyone tell me how to get rid of this message?

I'm not familiar with that card, but if it is a half decent RAID card (i.e. with embedded compute power), the delay is more likely to be the time spent initialising the RAID card, giving time for disks to spin up, scanning for disks and so on. If it is a dumb card, you may be better off to disable RAID functionality all together and mirror at the OS level - if the card ever dies what are the chances of getting a compatible card to replace it?

To clarify, I am not using the RAID functionality at all (software or
hardware) - I simply bought it so I could add more SATA drives into my
mythtv backend - I keep needing more storage!

I will look for jumpers to switch off RAID, although I can't remember
seeing any. If there aren't any, and I can't find any more in the card
bios I will just accept the delay.

Cheers and thanks to all the posters.

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