Topic: fibre channel

[ralph]

Hi list,
another attempt to get a little help from a friend in mind ...

Has anyone ever tried to install sme ( 5.1.2 or 5.5 ) on a box where some ( /home ) of the disks are meant to be connected via fibrechannel using either emulex lp 8000 or qlogic 2100 card ?

I'm not that deap into linux yet, so any help would be appreciated.

TIA, best regards,

Ralph

[Lloyd Keen]

Hi Ralph,
I've installed E-smith onto a 7x18GB Fibre Channel array that was hooked up to a Qlogic qla2000 card (wich uses the same module as the qla2100) and had no problems at all. The only problem is that because the qlogic card is basically an IO card and not a RAID controller I could only use either one of the drives (single HD install) or two of the drives (software RAID), not all 7 of them. To utilise the whole array you'd need a seperate RAID controller like an Adaptec Raidport card.

[ralph]

Hi Lloyd,

sounds great - did you do so without any changes ( modules ... ) ?
Did you use any internal ( not fibre connected ) disks as well ?

Here's my desired config :

No name dual PIII 800 / 2GB RAM, QL2100, Compaq RA4000 external fibre array ( up to 12 HDDs ).

In case you could tell about how you did it, I would really appreciate !

TIA, ciao,

Ralph

[Lloyd Keen]

Ralph,
My setup was very similar to yours. I had a dual PIII 650 Intel GX server board with only a CD and floppy connected to it as well as the qla2000 card. The qla2000 was connected to a 7x18GB external Fibre Channel array via a High Speed Serial Data Cable (copper). The qla2000 card was detected by the installation on booting and there was no requirement to load drivers from disk at all. AFAIK E-smith only supports software Raid for 2 disks so if you intend using all 12 disks you'll need some sort of add-on hardware raid controller.

[ralph]

Hi Lloyd,

gonna have a try this night and tell you whether I've succeeded or not. BTW the Compaq RA4000 is a FC box with integrated RAID Controller ( nice toy ! ).

So, as the array was to be set up before installing OS, there should be a disk usable for installation.

Hold on and thanks a lot so far !!!!!!!!!


;->>>> Ralph

[ralph]

Hi Lloyd,

had a try today with no success at all.

The server as a ql2100 as well as a adaptec 78xx adapter installed ( cdrom on adaptec ), sme 5.1.2 is loading aic7xxx driver but NOT the qlogic one.

Any idea ?

thanks, ciao,

Ralph