I'm looking for a 2-port SATA RAID 1 card, which I'll be installing into a P3 1 GHz to make up a wee webserver running Ubuntu.
I currently have my eye on the Adaptec 1210SA or the Promise FastTrak TX2200/TX4200 cards. Both of these appear to have Linux driver support, although the websites only list specific distros so I suspect they're binary drivers only.
The primary issue is that 90% of the RAID-1 cards for linux are so-called fakeraid. As far as I know there is only one true hardware 2 port RAID card - made by 3ware. This means they are doing proprietary RAID inside a kernel module. This might work out for you, or it might be a pain in the ass. I'd recommend getting a simple SATA controller and doing native linux software RAID-1 instead.
for a card which is known to work (I couldn't find a list of supported RAID controller cards for Ubuntu; if anyone can point me in the right direction I'd be appreciative).
There's no specific supported list because it's the kernel which dictates which are supported. As of recent kernels, it is merely whether the chipset is supported with libata or not that matters. Check the URLs at the bottom of this email for some references. However, most of the SATA cards you buy will work just fine as basic controllers. Given that there's no point buying a RAID-1 card if it's only going to be fakeraid anyway, you have a lot of options. Again, check the urls below for specific support. http://linux.yyz.us/sata/faq-sata-raid.html http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html http://www.wlug.org.nz/SoftwareRaidVsHardwareRaid