Topic: Install & Hard drive trouble

[Abe Loveless]

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2650 (RackMount) that I would like to use as an SME Server.  I'm having trouble getting the install procedure to recognize the drives.

The system seems to have 3 different types of SCSI controllers, that would all like to take control of the drives.  A PERC 3 RAID card (Dell's RAID adapter, that is supposed to load automatically using the "megaraid" driver), an on-board Adaptec AIC-7899 adapter (aic-7xxx driver), and something called an on-board RAID controller with ROMB functionality (which uses the "aacraid" driver)

I removed the PERC 3 card, and disabled the AIC-7899 in the BIOS, but I can't figure out how to disable this ROMB adapter.  If I could disable/remove the ROMB adapter, I'm sure one of the others would work.

The documentation shows that this ROMB has a device ID different from the typical driver found on the RedHat 7.2 cd.  So, I assume that holds true for SME, as well.  It give instructions for installing RedHat:
1. boot to cd
2. expert noprobe
3. Do you have a driver disk?  Choose No
4. Devices Window: Add Device -> Adaptec aacraid
    4b. Specify Parameters, in the Misc. field type aacraid_pciid=.........
5. OK, then continue as normal.

Is there anyway to break into the SME install to do this?  I know about the "accept dd", but I don't really need a new driver, I just need to edit the parameters.

Also, RedHat 7.1 installed fine, so I'm not sure why I keep getting hung up with the SME v5.1.2 install.

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Abe

[Abe Loveless]

I have downloaded the aacraid driver for RedHat 7.1 from Dell and created my boot disk.  Now when I install, and enter "accept dd" it loads the driver from my floppy... as it should.

It then detects the device again and loads the same driver from the cd... presumably over-writing the driver it just picked up from my floppy.  And I get the "No valid devices found, rebooting" message.

[Steve Bush]

I have 3 Dell PE 2550 servers, using the onboard PERC/3di raid controller along with the onboard SCSI for a tape drive (DLT8000).
I added two Intel Ethernet cards and disabled the onboard ethernet.

I used the raid configuration utility to setup a raid 5 partition.

The server installed perfectly with no additional drivers needed from the SME5.1.2 CD and the 5.5B9 CD.  I guess I'm glad the PE2650 wasn't out when I purchased them.

Have you tried SME5.5b9?  The kernel version is the same, but I don't know if SME patched it with a different aacraid driver.

fyi - In addition, all three of my servers have experienced a hard lockup.
The oldest one has locked up approx 5 times in 5 months, and the other two have locked up once each in the month I've had them.  It seems to occur during a backup.  I haven't had nor taken the time to troubleshoot it yet....

[Boris]

I've been using PE 2550 with RAID5 for over 8 months now. Stock SME 5.1.2 plus some contrib addons (monitor, etc.) Not a single glitch (yet). Never needed a driver disk. Built in Gigabit disabled, on board FastEthernet enabled. Onboard SCSI enabled for tape drive.
The only thing I had to do at the install time, to boot it from different CDROM Drive since the one comes with server could not be seen by installer. Try to hang the regular IDE or SCSI CDROM instead of original and install from it.

[Abe Loveless]

I was afraid you guys would say that.  

After reading your replies, I re-configured everything back to the vanilla config and tried again.  I have 2 36Gb drives that I used the PERC 3 adapter to configure as a RAID 1 array.  When I go through the install process, I choose "Install as 1 drive (hardware RAID)"... and I get the same result... "No devices found."

I have noticed that when it loads from the cd.. it auto-detects and loads the aacraid, aic7xxx, and megaraid driver.  It detects and loads these 3 drivers twice.  (I assume this happens because of the 2 drives.... but I'm not sure.)

I'll download the 5.5B9 iso this afternoon and see where that gets me.  What seems so weird is that RedHat 7.1 installed just fine... both with and without using the Dell ServerManager cd.

Anyone else have any other ideas??

Thanks,
Abe

[Abe Loveless]

Nope... 5.5b9 didn't do any better.

I still get hung up when it detects the drives.  I think it has something to do with an embedded RAID controller that uses the "aacraid" driver.  

Anybody else have any ideas?

Thanks,
Abe

[Steve Bush]

You said you tried to disable the onboard raid card.
Have you tried to pull the addon and use the onboard card?

Something Dell support had me do was disable all devices that I wasn't using to keep my PE2550 from sharing interrupts (ie com/usb/parallel/etc).
This was to troubleshoot a tape drive failure along with random lockups.

Good Luck

[Steve Bush]

I am now having the same issue you are with an HP NetServer LC2000. It has an integrated NetRaid 1Si (megaraid driver).  This is running SME5.0 without a problem, but when I try to upgrade it to SME5.5 I receive a No Drives Found message.  It appears to be loading the ncr53c8xx driver for the internal SCSI, but not the megaraid driver.

I don't have a copy of 5.12 handy to see if it has the same problem.
I will try it later this week.....

[Abe Loveless]

I hope you're getting along better than me.

After you mentioned that older versions were working, I tried them as well.  My system still wouldn't come up.

I have switched gears and am trying to install a Mandrake distro instead.  Of course, it doesn't seem to recognize the on-board nic's, so I need a couple more nic's and to disable the on-board devices.

Still keeping the SME faith.  I've got several servers running, I just wish my newest one would run it.  Maybe SME 6 will work.  Of course, that's probably 6 months or so away.  (Judging by past releases.)

[Steve Bush]

Did you say you moved the hot swap drives to he onboard raid and pulled the addon card?  The performance wouldn't be as high....but better than not working.
I'm guessing that this has something to do with the megaraid driver, so I emailed bugs@e-smith.com regarding the error we're seeing.  If I get any further I'll let you know.

[Charlie Brady]

Steve Bush wrote:

> I don't have a copy of 5.12 handy to see if it has the same
> problem.

5.5 and 5.1.2 have the same kernel, and much the same installer code, so I expect no differences in hardware detection between them.
I'm suprised that anything that worked in 5.0 does not work with 5.5.
Please send details to bugs@e-smith.com.

Regards

Charlie

[Steve Bush]

It turns out that the version of the Megaraid driver in Kernel 2.2.19 doesn't detect certain NetRaid adapters.  There is a driver on HP's site for Kernel 2.2.16 that allows SME to detect the drives.  I am a bit hesitant about using this driver.  I will contact HP to find out if they have a version of the driver compiled for kernel 2.2.19.

[Abe Loveless]

I installed the 5.6Alpha6 on my PowerEdge 2600 yesterday.  Worked like a charm.  Detected the drives, detected the on-board NIC's.

So... I'm planning on putting that machine on hold until the stable release comes out.  I wouldn't think it would be too far off.