Topic: Planning Ahead

[gbentley]

Hi All,

I will soon be installing a Dell SC1420 which is dual xeon capable server with 2 x 40GB SCSI discs on an Adaptec 39320 card.

I was going to use SME then it struck me that SME might not support such a card ?

If this is the case which driver would I use and where from ? Should I be looking at the Adaptec site for RedHat drivers ?

Anyone had any experience of this card and software raid using 2 SCSI discs ?

Thanks !

[gbentley]

Bump !

OK I have tried booting 6.0 Final and 6.5 and both do not recognise the Adaptec card. I notice it is down on the RH site as being supported in their Enterprise version.

I also notice that at the point whereby no IDE discs are (not) detected and I am asked to choose device drivers the install just continues. I assumed that at this point I would be asked to insert a floppy disc with some kind of driver on ?

Can anyone point me in the right direction here ?

I have some Linux experience but its been a while since I had to load modules etc as most hardware was detected at boot time.

Also if anyone else has installed any version of SME on the above server can you post you good / bad experiences ?

Many Thanks !

[gregswallow]

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=Adaptec+39320+redhat+7.3&meta=

[gbentley]

I looked at the Adaptec site and alot of the drivers show up as "Minimally Tested" alos there are so many versions !!!

Which version would be the most appropraite for SME and at what point during an install can I get to load a driver from floppy ?

Thanks

[gregswallow]

The redhat 7.3 version for i686 or athlon, depending on what CPU is in your server.

If oyu search on contribs.org for 'driver disk' or 'scsi controller' you'll probably find some instructions for similar situations if you get stuck.

[gbentley]

The Dell has a single 3.0GHz Xeon CPU - would it be appropriate to use the i686 version ?

[gregswallow]

No, send me the Xeon, I'll trade you for a P3

Yes, it will work

[gbentley]

Cheers Greg,

Was wondering if its better to go with SW RAID on the 2 SCSI discs or enable Host RIAD on the card  as it looks like there are dirvers for both ?

Of course I would take any advice on this as ;

1) I am a relative noob at RAID
2) I have to start this tomorrow !!!

Thanks again,

Graham

[gregswallow]

I'd go for software raid, since SME already supports it, and since the drivers for the card are not well supported as you pointed out.

[gbentley]

Now I really am getting this round my neck a bit

I downloaded the img disc from here ;

http://www.comnetel.com/bootdisk.htm

but get an error reporting that ks.cfg is missing so I copied it of the CD (renamed ks_stub.cfg) but get ;

"the 2nd stage of install youve selected doesnt match the disc your using - this shouldnt happen, I'm re-booting"

Shad Lords says " Custom drivers aren't part of the standard install" in this bug track ;

http://no.longer.valid/mantis/bug_view_page.php?bug_id=65

but why not ?

If I Ctrl-C then type accept dd during initial kernel load I get asked for driver floppy, the light goes on but nothing is loaded  from the adaptec disc and the install carries on from CD but fails.

What is being asked from the floppy that doesnt exist ?

modinfo
modules.cgz
modules.dep
pcitable
readme
rhdd-6.1

are on the disc but I thought there should be some loadable modules ???

Surely it cant be this hard to load some device drivers ? I thought that the more recent .iso's would include many more drivers and besides this isnt exactly cutting edge / latest hardware ...

[gregswallow]

Shad is just saying it's not supported.

I found another image if you want to try it:
http://download.adaptec.com/scsi/linux/aic79xx-1.3.5-i686-rh73.img

[gbentley]

Thanks Greg, I appreciate the time you spent on this.

I must owe you a few beers by now ?

I tried the other Adaptec disc as described above ie interupting the kernel load with Ctrl-C and then typing "accept dd" - the disc light does come on but nothing seems to be loaded from it even though I get asked do I want to load drivers.

Any further suggestions most graciously appreciated !

[gbentley]

Ended up installing Trustix [http://www.trustix.org] which detected the card, both discs and created a SWRAID device right from the installer.

All done in 10 mins.

Trustix has a completely manual post install configuration I know, but at least I got up and running.

Sorry it didnt work out

[gregswallow]

No worries...  See you when SME7 comes out