Re: [PATCH] Let AHCI dirver skip Lenovo SWRAID controller

From: Ocean HY1 He
Date: Tue Jan 26 2016 - 07:50:08 EST


Hi Alan,

Thanks for your comments!

Lenovo SWRAID driver is a closed source driver at this time, I am afraid
it's not possible to submit it to kernel.

This patch is very important and critical for Lenovo next generation
Servers. I have tried to make sure this patch only impacts Lenovo
dedicated hardware and add a on/off boot option to end user who may
still wants using open source SWRAID(such as MDRAID).

I am a newbie to submit patch to kernel, so I am not so clear about what
my patch breaks. Could you kindly explain that and is there a workaround
or solution to avoid the break?

Thanks a lot!

Ocean.

On 01/25/2016 09:18 PM, One Thousand Gnomes wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Jan 2016 03:11:40 +0000
> Ocean HY1 He <hehy1@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Lenovo SWRAID solution is based on Intel Non-RSTE RAID controller which
>> is called Lenovo SWRAID controller by set Lenovo dedicated PCI
>> SVID:SDID.
>>
>> Because AHCI driver now take control this Lenovo SWRAID controller for
>> MDRAID, Lenovo SWRAID driver fails to load later. It's not proper to
>> disable AHCI driver, because system has SATA contoller used for SATA
>> DVD, M.2 etc. There is no chance to load Lenovo SWRAID first, because
>> almost all Linux distros load AHCI driver first during installation.
>>
>> As default, when Lenovo SWRAID controller is detected, let AHCI driver
>> skip it thus MDRAID is disabled. Use the boot option 'ahci.lenovo_swraid=0'
>> could disable Lenovo SWRAID.
>
> You need to submit the Lenovo SWRAID driver to the kernel first.
> Otherwise this breaks things.
>
> Alan
>