Topic: Install to RAID-5 on Promise SX6000

[PC]

Hello all,

Got a problem for the smartest of you, should you accept the challenge.

I've got an older Dual P3-450 with a Promise SX6000, configured RAID-5,
useing 5 - 80GB Seagate Barracuda IDE drives total capacity 320GB.

Here's the problem, Windows installs to it just fine, with the drivers supplied
by Promise, and it boots to it just fine. No other hard drives required.

So far so good, proves that the device is working, however no Linux system
will install to it, even with the redhat drivers supplied by Promise.

SME doesn't even ask for the drivers, it just simply states to valid devices found.

Anyone got a sure fire solution to this problem?

BTW - With an IDE drive and a SCSI drive installed I was able to install SME 5.5,
but not with them removed.

[Kelvin]

Hi Pat,

>no Linux system will install to it

Do you mean to say that (assuming Promise provided say the RH 8.0 / RH 7.3 drivers) you could not get a standard download version of RH 8.0 /7.3 to install with the provided drivers ? If so, try getting the latest ones for Promise for those versions.

As for getting it to work with SME, I'm afraid you're in for an uphill battle (with possibly no positive outcome). As Promise will not release the source files for their drivers, you won't be able to compile one to suit the kernel version used by SME. Using the standard RH driver will not work as they are for the standard download version of RH kernels. In recent weeks, I've been trying to install a different IDE RAID card as well (this one actually had a driver for kernel 2.4.18-5 used by SME 5.6) and it still will not work.

By the way, to get to install your drivers, you need to hit caps lock (I think - sorry, can't remember exactly) at boot time then enter "accept dd" at the prompt. You will be prompted for a driver disk this time. Search the forums for the exact key.

Kelvin

[PC]

Hi Kelvin,

     Thank-you, that did prompt for a driver-disk.
It would seem that even the driver for RH 7.3 doesn't even work here.
Is there any way to tell if the driver even got installed?
I can get the SME to install to a SCSI drive, but not boot to it without floppy.
So how can you make it boot from the SCSI?

Right now I have Win2K server on the Promise SX6000, and if I take
out the floppy and re-boot....that is what comes up......



Looking at the properties of the device from within whine-doze....
It shows up as a:
   SCSI device -
   Location - 1 (PCI bus, device 8, function1)
   Memory Range - (E1800000 - E1BFFFFF)
   Interupt Request - 16

Since this is a test box I can afford to get a little creative... until it works right.

Please Help......I really don't want to use the MS on this server!!! 8'-(

[Kelvin]

Hi Pat,

>It would seem that even the driver for RH 7.3 doesn't even work here.

That's because SME 5.6 isn't really RH 7.3. It's using a later kernel than the one released with the download version of RH 7.3.

>Is there any way to tell if the driver even got installed?

I doubt very much if it did. For starters, assuming you are using drivers for a standard RH 7.3, the driver would be for the wrong kernel version. Additionally, the forums have a number of postings regarding problems getting SME to properly recognise third party driver disks (including a few from me ! ). Mitel's official word on this : If it isn't supported out of the box, it isn't supported at all.

>I can get the SME to install to a SCSI drive, but not boot to it without floppy.
>So how can you make it boot from the SCSI?

This has more to do with your Motherboard or SCSI BIOS than SME. Make sure your BIOS supports booting from SCSI and is set to do so. Also, make sure your SCSI card is actually bootable. Some lower end cards are not bootable, because it does not support it, irregardless of what your MB BIOS is set to.

>Right now I have Win2K server on the Promise SX6000, and if I take
>out the floppy and re-boot....that is what comes up......

OK, Now I'm a little confused. Are you referring to the SX6000 as the SCSI card ?

In any case, at the end of the day, without a matching driver disk, you will not be able to get SME onto your SX6000. Even if you somehow managed to, I won't be trusting the data being stored to it.

Kelvin

[Charlie Brady]

PC wrote:

> Since this is a test box I can afford to get a little
> creative...

Then how about a test install of 6.0beta2 on it?

Charlie

[Tom Keiser]

I had occasion to play with a Promise Raid card for SATA this week, and have found that their *VERY LATEST* driver set doesn't include anything other than stock RH kernels. Specifically, they offer support for the following kernels:

1.2 Support List
       Red Hat 7.1 UP      (kernel 2.4.2-2)
       Red Hat 7.1 SMP      (kernel 2.4.2-2smp)
       Red Hat 7.1 Enterprise   (kernel 2.4.2-2enterprise)
       Red Hat 7.2 UP      (kernel 2.4.7-10)
       Red Hat 7.2 SMP           (kernel 2.4.7-10smp)
       Red Hat 7.2 Enterprise   (kernel 2.4.7-10enterprise)
       Red Hat 7.2 UP            (kernel 2.4.18-3)
       Red Hat 7.3 SMP           (kernel 2.4.18-3smp)
       Red Hat 7.3 BIGMEM   (kernel 2.4.18-3bigmem)
       Red Hat 8.0 UP           (kernel 2.4.18-11)
       Red Hat 8.0 SMP           (kernel 2.4.18-11smp)
       Red Hat 8.0 BigMem       (kernel 2.4.18-11bigmem)
       Red Hat 9.0 UP      (kernel 2.4.20-8)                  
       Red Hat 9.0 SMP      (kernel 2.4.20-8smp)              
       Red Hat 9.0 ENTERPRISE   (kernel 4.20-8bigmem)

Other than the old E-smith 4.1.2, there's nothing on this list to match anything product SME produces.  Too bad.

Regards,

Tom

[PC]

Hello all,

Yes, Kelvin, the computer does boot to the Promise card when the MS system
is installed on the Promise card, but only to the MS system.

Yes, Charlie, I have tried to install 6.0_2 on the Promise card but with the same
results as before.

Thanks for the info, Tom, just seems like more bad news.

I also have downloaded their source code and for the benefit of all,
this is specifically what is in their read me file from their source code disk:

SuperTrak Linux Driver Installation

This document describes how to compile and install the new SuperTrak driver for
Linux. Our driver is a module. You do not need to recompile and reinstall the
kernel.

Before you start:

Be sure that your kernel source code is present on your PC, typically in the
/usr/src directory under the name Linux-2.4.16 or another Linux version. You
will need this source code to compile the new driver.

  1. Go to the kernel source code's directory,
      (for example, "/usr/src/linux-2.4.16")
  2. Run the command "make menuconfig" or "make xconfig" to configure kernel
     source codes.
     Configure "Loadable Module support" and "Processor type and features"
     the same as the kernel on which your PC is running so the driver can be
     loaded into the kernel.
  3. Save and Exit the configure menu.
  4. Run the command "make dep" as shown.
  5. Go to the directory where our driver code is located and modify the
     Makefile to support the new kernel.

     If you are not sure how to modify the Makefile, go to the Linux kernel
     source directory (for example, "/usr/src/linux-2.4.16") and run the command
     "make modules 2>&1 | tee /tmp/make.out".

  6. Create a new shell command file and copy one line compiling the other scsi
     card driver from the file "/tmp/make.out" to a new shell command file.
  7. Replace old driver file name with pti_st.c
  8. Run the new shell command to compile the new driver.
  9. Run the command "insmod pti_st.o" to load the new driver.

They make it sound so easy, can anyone make sense of this,
and explain it to me in Newbie?

Thanks,
PC

[Desmond Ruid]

>Mitel's official word on this :
> If it isn't supported out of the box, it isn't supported at all.

Does this mean that Mitel doesn't give a RA if their product is incompatible with third party hardware?

Sounds a little counter to the spirit of open-source GPL to me.

[Kelvin]

Hi Desmond,

>Does this mean that Mitel doesn't give a RA if their product is incompatible with
>third party hardware?

Mitel generally takes the view that it really isn't their problem - it's RedHat's and the hardware manufacturers'.

I deal with a wide range of hardware on a daily basis. A lot of these don't work with SME because of the different kernel. All these hardware that have Redhat support only supports the standard download versions. None of them are interested in either releasing their driver source nor compiling drivers for the many different kernel revisions out there. And this also brings up problems with newer hardware and chipset versions that are not properly supported by the kernel. It gets progressively harder to get older boards, etc to be supported by the out of date drivers in the kernel and with no easy way to patch or upgrade the drivers in the existing kernel, this becomes an big problem.

This is the reality of hardware in the market. The rate of change is high. This is not a big problem for Windows as you don't have to recompile the Windows kernel to get the new drivers to work. However, even when source is available, recompiling a driver is not without problems. I have tried compiling drivers for Highpoint cards but they won't load. I've also tried updated 3ware drivers from Shad Lord which loads but very frequently causes a kernel panic on bootup (had to stick with the ones that shipped with SME itself). So if there are new features / bug fixes in the new drivers, there is a chance you won't be able to get it to work in your server anyway. Perhaps part of the problem lies with the fact that Mitel does not release an "official" SME DevTools package and maybe the DevTools contrib from the other members here isn't quite 100% correct (I don't know for sure about this - all I know is, from time to time when compiling things there are lots of errors about files not being where they should be, etc. etc.).

Basically, as far as SME goes, if a driver does not exist in the kernel development tree, forget it. If you manage to get it to work, YAY for you ! If not, tough.

Kelvin

[PC]

Well, it seems to be like whipping a dead dog here.

Even installing 6.0_3 on this machine only goes so far as to
install to a SCSI drive on a SCSI controller, or an IDE drive on an
IDE controller, but nothing, SCSI or IDE on a Promise PCI controller card.

Since no one has been able to come up with a way to do this, for a MITEL
operating system, I suppose that it can NOT be done.

Pardon my discouragement.
 I thought that some one would be able to tell me 'how to make this work,'
 instead I got told 'why this won't work.'

For now I will label this box Microsoft only, concede defeat, and move on.

Microsoft - 1 : Linux - 0