What devices do drives attached to a Promise SX8 controller use?

Updated -

The SX8 driver (sx8.o), introduced in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 3, will display output during the boot sequence similar to:

sx8(03:01.0): port 6 device 312581808 sectors
sx8(03:01.0): port 6 device "ST3160023AS"
sx8(03:01.0): port 7 device 502614000 sectors
sx8(03:01.0): port 7 device "HDS722525VLSA80"
 sx8/0a: sx8/0a1
 sx8/0b: sx8/0b1
 sx8/0c: sx8/0c1
 sx8/0d: sx8/0d1
 sx8/0e: sx8/0e1
 sx8/0f: sx8/0f1
 sx8/0g: sx8/0g1
 sx8/0h: sx8/0h1
sx8(03:01.0): 8 ports activated
sx8/0: pci 03:01.0, ports 8, io fe900000, irq 28, major 160

You can also find this information in /var/log/dmesg or by typing the dmesg command from the command line.

The below references may also be found in /proc/partitions. These do not represent the device nodes, instead they are references which align according to the table below:

sx8/0[a-h] -> /dev/sx8/[0-7]
sx8/1[a-h] -> /dev/sx8/[8-15]
sx8/2[a-h] -> /dev/sx8/[16-23]
sx8/3[a-h] -> /dev/sx8/[24-31]

Using the aligned devices you should be able to access drives attached to the SX8 controller (assuming of course the sx8 driver has been loaded). You can verify which drivers or modules are loaded by executing the lsmod command (from a command prompt). This will present you with a list of currently loaded modules. The following lsmod output shows an example with the sx8 module loaded.

Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
ide-cd                 34016   0  (autoclean)
cdrom                  32544   0  (autoclean) [ide-cd]
parport_pc             18852   1  (autoclean)
lp                      9124   0  (autoclean)
parport                38816   1  (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
autofs4                16952   0  (autoclean) (unused)
audit                  90552   3
e1000                  76956   1
floppy                 57520   0  (autoclean)
sg                     37228   0  (autoclean) (unused)
microcode               6848   0  (autoclean)
keybdev                 2976   0  (unused)
mousedev                5624   1
hid                    22276   0  (unused)
input                   6144   0  [keybdev mousedev hid]
usb-uhci               26956   0  (unused)
usbcore                81056   1  [hid usb-uhci]
ext3                   89960   2
jbd                    55060   2  [ext3]
sx8                    17968   0
sd_mod                 13712   0  (unused)
scsi_mod              114344   2  [sg sd_mod]

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