Topic: aacraid+driver+dell

[treyh]

Hello Everyone,

Myself and many other have had problems installing SME on SCSI and SATA RAID controllers on dell poweredge servers. I believe I have found a solution.

Technical Info:
Raid Controller driver = aacraid
my specific controller = adaptec 2610 Serial ATA
system = poweredge SC1420

Later today I will perform these steps but before I do, I wanted to see if anyone had any suggestions or ideas for my idea.

1. since I have 2 drives, I'm going to setup raid 1. I accessed the setup utility for my raid controller by typing ctrl+A at system startup (may be different for your system). Make sure to format the drives if it gives you the options.
**The point of this step is to prepare the drives for installation of the OS. If you don't understand, you will later.**

2. take out all the raid controller (which means the SATA drives will be disconnected)

3. hook up 1 IDE drive directly to the mboard

4. install me (should be no problems)

5. install aacraid drivers that I found on dell's website (*.rpm format)
**I have over 10 different drivers to try, so I will try 1 and if doesn't work, I'll try another and so on and son on**

6. shutdown the system

7. put the raid controller back in
8. unplug the 2nd drive fron the controller
9. boot the system using ghost (both ide and raid drive hooked up)
10. ghost everything from the IDE drive to the raid drive.
11. shutdown
12. remove the ide drive
13. hook the 2nd raid drive back up
14. remove all the installation media (cd and floppies)
15. boot the system

I'll let everyone know how it turns out in a couple hours.


       

[treyh]

Here is what I did.

1. setup my sata raid controller card to do raid 1 (2 drives)
2. removed the raid controller card
3. hooked up a maxtor ide drive to the mboard
4. installed sme (worked great)
5. installed the driver (rpm format) from dell's website for my sata raid controller (aacraid generic driver)
6. rebooted
7. shutdown
8. hooked the primary raid drive directly to the mboard via SATA
9. used ghost to copy everything from the maxtor drive to the primary raid drive
10. it completed
11. put the sata raid controller card back in
12. hooked the primary raid drive back to it
13. sme booted but froze right after the flash screen

I know this process will work but I think it failed because of the raid 1 configuration.

Here is what I'm currently working on.

1. deleted the raid array
2. setup the array as "volume" so there is no raid, just logical drives
3. this time I left the sata raid controller card plugged in, w/ both raid drives hooked up
4. and I'm currently using ghost to copy sme to the "volume array"
5. I didn't have to format the drives because ghost will do that for you.
6. once that's done I'll try to boot again

I'm currently on step 4, just wanted to let everyone know what I've found so far

   

[treyh]

just to let everyone know, I finished the 2nd attempt with the same problem.

It says:
Loading Sme Server-Up....

and then freeezes.

Any ideas or suggestions. The only thing i can try at this point is patches for that driver.

[treyh]

hey guys, I haven't given up just been super busy. I'm taking my vacation next week. My next will be to try this HOWTO i found.

It's for if you use norton ghost and SME hangs on boot, just what the doctor ordered......
http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rmitchell/smeserver/howto/Cloning%20drive%20with%20Ghost%20lilo.conf%20fix%20HOWTO%20for%20sme%20server.htm

[gyrcom]

I've been working a lot with the Dell Poweredge sc420 lately. 7A14 will for sure install correctly, and boot correctly on SATA raid 1. The raid settings must be turned off in the Dell Bios. The raid will be dirty and needs to be synced.
7A2, which is the latest I've tried will not install properly. 22 will only partition the drive into two partitions, without a swap partition,, ugh.
I tried a 7A14 install and then an upgrade to 7A22 which worked, except that 7A22 had several other problems other than raid.
I shall try 7A23 next.

[treyh]

Hey Everyone,

for anyone who is watching this thread. I have not had a chance to try the "norton ghost fix" because I am on vacation from work.

1 of my associates will try this before the week is over, maybe even today.

Cheers