hi,

this is my attempt to add support for the ataraid devices to the 2.6 
kernel. the code is as far as possible from being mature and useable as 
one could imagine (i have not even requested any plugin-ids for the evms 
engine). for now it only detects the HPT370A controller, because of i am 
  checking the pci-ids of the controller to prevent that any non-raid 
disks are stolen by the raid module. this would happen with the current 
ataraid code from the kernel v2.4.

the attached patch applies against evms 2.2.2 and adds a bios module for 
handling the hpt-volumes. after running evms_activate the partitions on 
the raid volumes nodes are created as /dev/evms/hptraidXpY. X is the 
volume index and Y is the partition number. i succeeded in mounting a 
4gb fat partition and tarring up the contents. more testing is still on 
my todo list.

the code is based on the local disk manager plugin and i hope i have got 
all the copyright stuff right.

the current features are:
* supports the HPT370A raid controller
* supports disk striping (raid-0)
* works with kernel 2.6 (tested with 2.6.2)
* the volume is scanned by the segment managers (dos & bsd) to create 
block devices for the partitions

todos:
* access to the last sector (kernel 2.6 only)
* add more controllers
* add mode raid levels
* create "whole disk" volume (currently only under .nodes)
* use sysfs for scanning
* get official evms plugin ids
* more modular design to make it easier to add code for other controllers
* more testing

i am sure i did it *all wrong* so comments are welcome. after all, this 
is the first thing that i ever did with evms. ;)

greetings,
wilfried

PS: can anyone get me a plugin id?