[UCI-Linux] Problem with Areca RAID controllers on Dapper with >4GB RAM

[Harry Mangalam]

Thanks to Daniel Wang who passed this on.

If you're running an Areca RAID controller on AMD64 Ubuntu Dapper (or 
any 64bit OS) with >4GB RAM, this may be important for you.

Areca has acknowledged a driver problem which results in damaged files 
using the Areca driver released with the Dapper Final release 
(version 6.0.6, I believe). Areca had fixed the problem well before 
the Dapper release, but Ubuntu did not include the patched driver. 
The latest driver certainly seems to have fixed it: version 
1.20.0X.13.
You can build the replacement kernel driver out of the kernel tree if 
you follow the readme included in the replacement driver:
ftp://60.248.88.208/RaidCards/AP_Drivers/Linux/DRIVER/SourceCode

 If your root filesystem is on the Areca filesystem, you've probably 
already figured out that something is amiss (as Daniel did).  If it's 
not, the filesystems that are on the Areca-controlled partitions are 
being silently corrupted, as I found out when I umounted and forced a 
fsck on it - >200 inode miscalcs. :(

Good luck.
-- 
Cheers, Harry
Harry J Mangalam - 949 856 2847(o) 949 285 4487(c) (email for fax)
                   hjm at tacgi.com  [plain text preferred]