Topic: New version with same old driver issues v6.5Beta1

[nemtex]

First of all, congrats on the new release, I just wish I could be there to see it.

I have a Promise Fastrak sx4000 IDE RAID controller which I thought was going to solve all of my storage problems, well it did in a way (as I can’t install SME I have loads of space).  

Having tried to get this card to work with v6 and given up, I was slightly surprised to find that v6.5 (and yes I know its only a beta), was still way behind in the hardware support stakes.

SUSE and REDHat have drivers for the cards and I actually have one for SME but as the ALT+F2 function has been disabled or broken (cant decide which), its about as much use as a chocolate teapot.

I have used SME on old hand-me-down workstations since v4 and have therefore never really pushed the ‘SME hardware boundaries’ before. But since my 2 x 120gb IDE hdd’s (RAID 1) were starting to buckle under the strain of being so full, I decided to get 2 more and a hardware RAID 5 card. This would give me another 230GB + to play with and offered me some ‘future proofing’. It said on the box support for Redhat and  SUSE so naturally I assumed SME would be ok. I of course now realise that you should never assume anything with Linux, especially SME.

I realise that Promise isn’t as supported as the likes of Adaptec but these cards have been around for 3 – 4 years now and they are still not supported, that’s bad even for Linux. A lot of people will be grinding teeth and cursing me now no doubt, telling me to write/compile the driver myself (would if I knew how). I also think I have suffered enough for my insults as I have been torturing myself for about a month now with the Microsoft’s bloatware version of SME, Windows 2000 server. It’s quite sad to see, what was once a proud and capable SME server buckle under the strain of carrying MS’s equivalent.

Anyway for those of you that haven’t stopped reading due to me boring you to death or to grab a nearby pitchfork to impale me on, I ask you, please please please could we have a driver sorted for Promise RAID controllers, or could someone tell me how I can enable to boot sequence to register I have a driver disk….. something, anything, I really don’t want to continue using Win2000 any longer than I have to.

James

[gregswallow]

Do you have the 2.00.0.24 bios?
http://www.promise.com/support/download/download2_eng.asp?productId=94&category=All&os=100

There is also a Redhat 7.3 driver there that should work (make disk with the same utility as below), although with the newer kernel in SME, maybe if that doesn't work thy the redhat 9 driver disk.  And I think I remember you have to boot from a SME boot floppy to add a supplemental driver - http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/smeserver/releases/6.5beta1/os/images/boot.img - made in windows with: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/smeserver/releases/6.5beta1/os/dosutils/rawritewin/rawwritewin.exe

Search the forums here too, even look way back, the procedure is similar for other scsi cards, etc.  But maybe it was the bios problem that was screwing you up...

[patrick]

insert sme install cd into your computer and boot as normal. As soon as it starts booting from the cd press and hold the left shift button

when the boot: prompt appears, type: accept dd

the installer will ask you to insert driver disks

put your new image disk in and it will install the drivers

Robert is your mothers brother.

Hope that helps.

Patrick

[nemtex]

Thanks for the ideas. I'll be honest I haven't tried flashing the BIOS on the card.

Redhat works fine in fact its installing as I type. IDKEEN made a driver disk that was 'compiled'/created to work with the Kernel used in SME 6.0/01 but it will not work at install, but it is installable post install.

The most success I have had is with the redhat 9 driver disk but it complains about needing a supplemental disk after it has read the promise driver disk. I'm guessing its after the redhat version of 'drvblock.img'. I have tried copying this to a disk but SME refuses to do anything with it, in fact as soon as the RH9 driver is loaded (checked this by using ALT+F3 and F4) the floppy seems to be locked in limbo. Wondered if 2 floppy drives was the answer or if I could unmount the disk and mount the new one using the console in ALT+F5 I think it was.

I have read lots of posts about creating drivers img files but when I tried to download the tools at http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/saco/contrib/devtools_SME6.0/ they aren’t there any more (ref http://www.comnetel.com/bootdisk.htm).

Is there any way I can install sme on a single drive and then ‘ghost’ it onto the array and make it bootable? I assume lilo will be looking  for things in the wrong place but if I can sort this out before dumping the image across. It would be great.

Another option I wondered about was to create a small RH install on a memory stick just enough to load the array drivers and then run the CD install. Don’t know if this is possible or not?

I hope when the Lycoris version comes out it will have a wider hardware support. I will quite happily pay for SME now I am in a better situation to do so. Especially after using win2000.

[CharlieBrady]

I realise that Promise isn’t as supported as the likes of Adaptec ...

You can blame Promise for that.

There is no such thing as hardware RAID, BTW. All RAID is in software, and it's just a question of where the software runs. In most respects, the linux software RAID is the equal or better of RAID implemented in firmware by hardware manufacturers.

Did you consider using just a plain ATA-100/ATA-133 add-in card to give you some extra ATA ports? Works fine for me.

[nemtex]

You can blame Promise for that.

From my regular usage of Windows systems I would disagree. Linux seems to have a totally inflexible driver system. At least with windows a Win2000 driver works with WinXP etc. In windows terms, this situation would be like running a minor WinXP update (one of there 50k security updates for example) and none of the drivers would work any more.

I'm sure this is why Linux is as stable as it is but I cannot understand why life has to be made so complicated. Surely some flexibility is possible.

The other thing I dont understand is why other Redhat based installs now have embeded support the card. An example of this would be cent OS.

I know that there is an SME / Cent OS project running at the moment but it is really the realm of regular linux users that have a lot more experiance than I do, if you haven't already gathered my linux knowledge could be written on the back of a Postage stamp.  

I suppose my point is that a new version has been released, would this not have been a good time to update the driver database? - I realise this is a very one sided and selfish opinion as the guys at SME may have updated the drivers, just not the one's I needed. I know there are several other Promise users out there that have had to reluctantly dump SME in favour of a Windows system (I say 'favour' when in fact it's more through lack of choice).

If I chose to dump the sx4000, how can I set up SME to use a software RAID 5 system that is bootable? I would have been happier not spending money on a RAID card if I didn't need to. The last version I saw only gave me the option of RAID 1.

[CharlieBrady]

If I chose to dump the sx4000, how can I set up SME to use a software RAID 5 system that is bootable?

There is no support in SME server for RAID 5. Why not use RAID 1?

[nemtex]

I have 4 120GB's so raid 5 or 10 / 0 + 1 are really my only options as I dont have a budget for any more drives.

I am going to try to 'build' a driver using the comnetel helpsheet (see post above).

Does anyone know where I could find the dev tools mentioned as the link is not working, or even better a link to tools for v6.5beta?

Also some help or guidance would be very welcome. I cannot get my head around linux, which is made ever more frustating as I loved MSDOS and dispise windows.

Could someone suggest a book to buy that would help me to learn linux, preferably a redhat install so I can use the knowledge for SME.

In the meantime I have managed a rather 'bastardised' soluton. I have installed WinXP pro, then Virtual PC, and then SME. No problems here apart from speed and a real lack of security.  

Rather silly but it gives me some time.... until the Virtual PC demo runs out anyway.....

[gregswallow]

(for 6.0.1)
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/hpe/devtools-6.01/dev-rpms/

(for 6.5b1)
Some are here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/smeserver/releases/6.5beta1/os/e-smith/RPMS/
Any ones that are missing can probably be found here:
http://download.fedoralegacy.org/redhat/7.3/

[slords]

(for 6.5b1)
Some are here:
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/smeserver/releases/6.5beta1/os/e-smith/RPMS/

In case you haven't figured it out yet, the os directory is just a copy of what is on the CD's.  So anything you find there is on the CD and can be installed from there.

-Shad

[nemtex]

If the files are already on the CD. Does this mean if I already have a 6.5 SME running I can use it to make the drivers without installing anything extra?

Please forgive my total ignorance.

also could you please give me a quick run down on RPMS's how to install, or again suggest a link or book that may enlighten me (probably need a miracle).

Also does anyone think this proceedure will work or am I flogging a dead horse?

[gregswallow]

For 6.5b1, some are on the cd, but they don't get installed.  Just as easy to download and install them (edit - if you have a fast internet connection .

If you have 6.5b1, just find the new versions of all the same ones from 6.01 directory.  

Google is better than any book - just search for "installing rpms", I'm sure there are literally a million pages about that

Basically just download them all into a folder and install with 'rpm -Uvh --nodeps *.rpm'  The nodeps option usually isn't necessary, but for some of them you don't need/want all the dependant rpms.

[nemtex]

Thanks for all your help everybody. I am hoping to try and make the driver disk tonight. Wish me luck .

Once again thank you!

[nemtex]

OK it didn't work. while making the disk I was keeping an eye on things in MC in another console and I noticed that the frasttrak.o file was about 300k bigger than the other '.o' files in the initrd.img file. I also noticed that, unlike the other files, it was coloured bright green and had a '*' next to it. Is this a problem?

I think the driver files was probably too big and that's why the disk failed but as I blindly followed the instructions, I can't be sure.  

Words of encouragement welcome.....

I am going to have another go tonight, using v6 as this is what the instructions are based on. if this works, I'll then have another stab at v6.5.

On this note, if I get 6 to work, can I upgrade to 6.5 without the use of the CD? Is this what the SRPMS are for in the 'update' folder? Probably is but I just want to confirm.  

[mikie]

get ride of the promise card, they suck anyway windows or linux, by a real raid card like the 3ware, install SME out of the box on 3ware and life is good again