I cant get RH 6 or 7 to see my External RAID.

I have a CMD External RAID Controller w/4 scsi drives running RAID 5.
When Booting I see:
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: scsi : 0 hosts.
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: scsi : detected total.
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: md.c: sizeof(mdp_super_t) = 4096
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: Partition check:
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 >
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: autodetecting RAID arrays
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: autorun ...
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: ... autorun DONE.
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: (scsi0) <Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter> found at PCI 0/14/0
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: (scsi0) Wide Channel, SCSI ID=7, 16/255 SCBs
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: (scsi0) Cables present (Int-50 NO, Int-68 NO, Ext-68 YES)
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: (scsi0) Downloading sequencer code... 423 instructions downloaded
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: enable_irq() unbalanced from d081b3c7
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: scsi0 : Adaptec AHA274x/284x/294x (EISA/VLB/PCI-Fast SCSI) 5.1.28/3.2.4
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: <Adaptec AHA-294X Ultra SCSI host adapter>
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: scsi : 1 host.
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: autodetecting RAID arrays
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: autorun ...
May 16 07:44:25 fs1 kernel: ... autorun DONE.

But I cant see or format the drives. I am relitivly new to External RAIDS are there preliminary steps I have missed??
Is there a good FAQ for setting up Viper II RAIDS on Linux??

If your hardware RAID is configured properly (you should have received config util with your RAID card), then your Linux install should see it as a single SCSI drive and not a RAID array at all.

Hardware RAID should be transparent to the OS. Those RAID messages you see are not for hardware but software RAID detection.

You said you have 4 drives running a RAID 5. Did you configure them as RAID 5 with some utility or were you thinking of doing that within Linux?

>>You said you have 4 drives running a RAID 5. Did you configure them as RAID 5 with some utility or were you thinking of doing that within Linux?

I configured the RAID with a terminal utility. The utility (on the controller) allowed me to create and Format the RAID. Thats why im so confused. Linux should see it. Unfortunatly there is almost no information about the CMD 5640 on the web and nothing about it in reguards to getting it to cooperate w/ linux

well.. my personal experience with hardware RAID is limited to Compaq equipment.. but from what I can find on the web.. your card should work in Linux

Unfortunately the manufacturer doesn't provide support of any kind to end users. Who did you purchase the card from?

The Compaq RAID setup creates devices named /dev/c0d0 and partitions of /dev/c0d0p1 for example. Are you sure there is nothing like that showing up when you boot?