6.6 and Dell Raid Controller H800A

[Mark786]

We are on 6.5.1.2 and have been 'trying' to upgrade to 6.6 but it appears our new Dell H800A controller is not properly supported.

This is something we are discussing with our account manager to find a satisfactory solution (we have a workaround using XFS instead of VXFS) but was wondering if anyone had experienced similar issues?

[teiva-boy]

Is SUSE 10 can work with it, then it should work.  You'll want to check the HCL for that from Novell.

That said, you can always load the drivers manually, dont always rely on Symantec having the latest ones...

[Mark786]

Yeah we managed to get it working with XFS so in that sense it does work. However, we want it to work with VXFS (for reasons of support).

Thanks anyway.

[S_Williamson]

Hi

I am doing the same right now. Installing 6.6 to my first Dell Server (We used HP before) and come across the fact Dell H700/H800 not supported.

I downloaded the Drivers from Dell site, mounted the virtual IMG file. On the Puredisk Boot screen, I select Expert Mode and Hit F5 aswell and select Drivers=YES. On boot the system scanned the USB Virtual Device and found the correct H700/H800 devices.

I am in the middle of this right now so would be interested in any other feedback you have.

Simon

[S_Williamson]

After the installer finally loaded, All the disks were recognised correctly and PD Installed Fine. After my first reboot I have an error which I am now trying to work through

"Waiting for device /dev/disk/by-id/scsi-xxxxxxxx-part2 to appear: .................... not found - exiting to /bin/sh"

Simon

[AAlmroth]

It seems that the Symantec install process doesn't properly put in the correct drivers on the DUD disks. It works during installation, but upon first boot you are lost.

There is no trivial workaround, but if you boot into expert mode from PDOS DVD, and abort the installation so that you get a console (not the GUI one) rescue session, you can manually put the correct megaraid_sas for SMP kernel in place and run mkinitrd to build new ramdisk.

But it essentially is;

1. Get into CLI rescue mode

2. Find the partition, and mount it in /mnt (also, if you have a separare /boot, mount it in /mnt/boot)

3. Copy the SMP version of megaraid_sas into /lib/modules/2.6*42*smp/kernel/drivers/scsi/megaraid.

4. chroot /mnt

5. mkinitrd

6. In /mnt/etc/sysconfig/kernel file, add megaraid_sas on INITRD_CONFIG line

7. Power cycle with Ctrl-Alt-Del. Reboot or shutdown does not work with chroot in rescue mode.

8. Voila, the PDOS installation can continue.

I have the procedure, but not entirely written for screen by screen steps. Actually, my client's Linux admin found the core problem, and we now have to follow this workaround.

However, it only works for 6.6GA (and 6.6.0.x), but the SYMC upgrade scripts for 6.6.1 completely messes up the system, so you can't even boot. Sigh!

We are currently trying to figure out how to work around this issue as well, and will open a support case with SYMC, but I guess there will be little help to get there though.

/A

[S_Williamson]

Hi Thanks for the reply. We also worked out that the Dell driver we were using gets installed into the default kernel but after PDOS went through and installed after reboot the Dell driver was in the old Kernel and not the new one PDOS setup. We went through a similar process to what you have descrobed but each time you upgrade the driver its not going to work to the driver was compiled for a different kernel. A Solution to this issue is to download Dells DKMS program http://linux.dell.com/dkms/manpage.html which (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) can recomplile the driver as you get newer kernels. This wasnt an answer for us as the the R710 Dell has a H700 internal controller which also needs the megaraid_sas.ko file to use. Effectively we wouldnt be able to boot the system to install the driver without some rescue disk. In the end I got it working like this Boot to installer, Installer complains it cant find any disks. Click Abort which then exits to YAST2. From there install the kernal mode driver. Symantec gave me a ISO file which I used rather then the Dell one but both are megaraid_sas version 00.00.04.17. Instead of going back into the "new" installer, I installed from the YAST2 menu using the "old" installer system. After it finished, I rebooted and 6.6 was up and running. I did this on Friday and havent had a chance to patch to 6.6.1 etc yet so not sure if that will break it. I also placed a request with Symantec about the posssibility of going to SUSE 11 SP1 as this has version 00.00.04.27 of megaraid in it so will support Dells out of the box. The current SUSE SP2 was released in 2008!! Simon