[ILUG] Server installation...

[Declan Moriarty]

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 18:54 +0100, Lisa Muir wrote:
> Hi Guys,
> 
> I don't know why I try to do these things on a Friday afternoon when
> I've been oven baked in my car on the m50, but I'm here now so must
> continue...
> 
> I'm trying to install a SuSE business package on a new server. The
> suse business package is old, and uses kernerl 2.4.19, and the server
> is brand spanking new, with a couple of SATA disks running off an
> Intel 6300ESB controller.
> 
> The controller has an LSI Raid Bios embedded, and I can raid the two
> 160GB's to raid level 1, which is what I want to do. I boot from the
> CD, and it can't see any disks, just what I needed.
> 
> Intel have kindly provided binary driver downloads built for various
> distribution versons, so nice of them. Threre is one tgz bundle which
> might contain sources that I can build, but its tagged RedHat
> enterprise.
> 
> Before I go there, I presume that if I load up the modules for the
> chip at install time, that I'm going to see independent disks instead
> of a Raid array, and that its an LSI driver that I need to see the
> array.
> 
> But that poses the questions... will the LSI driver see the array if
> linux can't see the individual disks, or are they presented to an LSI
> driver through the BIOS. And then, how do you go about building a
> driver for an embedded controller when you don't actually know what
> specifically it is supposed to be. Ok, I can google / mine LSI for the
> answer to that last bit, just being tired and lazy, but would
> appreciate some input on whether I'm going to need the Intel
> controller module for it all to work.
> 
> FWIW... the hardware is a fujitsu-siemens Primergy Econel 200, and its
> tech specs state that the onboard controller is Intel 6300ESB Chipst,
> and under description says LSI SATA SW-RAID 0,1 (for up to 2 x HDD's)

Hmm... Everyone's quiet. Let me try.

The bit that jumps out on me is kernel 2.4.19. Mind you, you ought to
have had the sense to stay off the M50 carpark on a Friday afternoon,
but I'll allow you make that mistake once ;-).

AFAIK, the 2.4x kernels never had sata. 2.4.18 certainly hadn't. In the
days of 2.4 another linux lady on a different mailing list had to go to
what was then the highly flaky 2.5x kernels to get sata access for her
server. SuSE may have stuck it in, of course, but that gets messy. They
wanted you to buy a newer package and you didn't.

If you're building, remember ldconfig, to be run in all "dangers,
temptations, and afflictions".  This is disk access, right? Suse and red
hat are not so different there. You can always make that tgz and then
grok very carefully before installing. unless it's huge, ./configure --
enable-static --disable-shared might just give you a static version,
needing no libs.

I feel you will end up going to a 2.6 kernel. It really isn't clever to
go to a 2.4x kernel now - they are effectively unsupported. The
toolchain is: glibc, gcc, & kernel headers. Now you'll have 2.4 kernel
headers, so piles of strange errors will occur. Take it from someone who
went from kernel 2.4 to kernel 2.6 _without_ changing kernel headers and
got loads of weirdo problems (perhaps)as a result. I know the theory is
otherwise, but there's been a lot of work on this particular spot
recently in the HLFS list on linuxfromscratch.org, and my betters are
informing me. 


Enjoy the weekend.
-- 
        With Best Regards,

        Declan Moriarty.