MSA2000 Boot From San with Linux

[Davide Depaoli_3]

Hello,
I have problems to setup boot from san with the following:

MSA2012fc dual ctrl
DL380 G5
FC HBA FC1242SR
Red Hat Linux 4 U7 x86

I have enabled HBA Bios
During Linux setup I see the SAN disk and I'm able to install the O.S.

But during next reboot, the server cannot boot from the san lun.

With MSA1000 all these steps works at the first attempt.

Where is my mistake ?

thank in advance
Davide

[Rob Leadbeater]

Hi Davide,

During the installation of RedHat, check that the boot loader (GRUB) is being installed onto the SAN LUN rather than the first disk that is found in the machine...

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[Sivakumar MJ._1]

TS1:

Enable only One HBA (if you have dual HBA) and proceed as per your procedures. Once you are done with Installation then enable the alternate HBA.

TS2:
Check the LUN ID in the MSA2000

[Davide Depaoli_3]

I have pushed out the server internal hdds, so the server see only its msa2000 lun.

During linux setup, I have only one active hba port (the other has cable unplugged and bios disabled), but I see two partitions (sda and sdb). I think because the msa2000 has two active/active controllers.

I choose only sda partition.

I have also checked the SPOCK stream and it seems the fc1242sr/msa2000 pair is supporting boot from san.

I have also updated hba and msa2000 firmware

For Sivakumar: what do you mean with "Check the LUN ID in the MSA2000" ? I've tried with all LUNs ID to 0 (zero), and with every LUN with its ID (Volume1/LUN 0, Volume2/LUN 1, .....).

thanks
Davide

[Davide Depaoli_3]

Now I have:
- disabled zoning
- destroyed and recreated Vdisk and volumes
- mapped only one host to its volume

Reinstalled linux and now after reboot I have a "GRUB Hard disk error".

Are there any msa2000 related volume preparation for linux ?

Thanks
Davide

[Sivakumar MJ._1]

what do you mean with "Check the LUN ID in the MSA2000" ?

Thats one option for TS.

I've tried with all LUNs ID to 0 (zero), and with every LUN with its ID (Volume1/LUN 0, Volume2/LUN 1, .....).

[Davide Depaoli_3]

Update:

I have installed o.s. in full single-path mode - one msa crtl with one port connected
- one switch
- one port on server connected
- installed hba driver in failover mode (install -f)
all is working.

Today I have attached all cables:

- two msa ctrl with four ports
- two switches
- two port on server connected

One port of HBA see msa ctrl AND lun
Second port see only msa ctrl.

Linux boots, but it seems the disk is mounted in a strange mode.
During the boot the message:

cannot touch /var/lock/subsys/kudzu read only filesystem
cannot touch /var/lock/subsys/networks read only filesystem

ant the system is not working regularly.

Any idea ?

Thanks
Davide

[Davide Depaoli_3]

At least I have found that Qlogic failover driver is not working whit msa2000. I have to use HPDM multipath mapper, but RHEL 4 does not support it on / filesystem.

Finally I have installed RHEL 5 with native mpath option. Now the boot works properly, but I'm not able to configure multipath.
I've modified /etc/multipath.conf

device
{
vendor "HP"
product "MSA2[02]12fc|MSA2012i" path_grouping_policy multibus getuid_callout lib/udev/scsi_id -g -u /dev/%n"
path_selector "round-robin 0" rr_weight uniform path_checker tur hardware_handler "0" failback immediate no_path_retry 18 rr_min_io 100
}

like described in "Device Mapper Multipath Enablement Kit for HP StorageWorks Disk Arrays v4.2.1 release notes"

but don't know how to setup Qlogic driver (the instructions on this document doesn't works)

Thanks again
Davide

[Davide Depaoli_3]

It seems the native DM mapper doesn't works with MSA2000. scsi_id does not return any value for disks.

Now I'm trying to use HP-DMmultipath, but it is supported on RHEL 5.3, and I have 5.1.

In the meantime I'm downloading 5.3, anyone has any news or experience about this ?

Davide

[Davide Depaoli_3]

RHEL 5.3 installer for multipath has a bug.

I've tried with 5U2 and all is gone !

Now I have a problem to correctly setup failover.

I have installed HPDM multipath 4.2.0 and Qlogic driver from HP (with install -s).

When I unplug a f.c. cable from the server, the disk doesn't fail over on the 2nd path.

dmesg says:
qla2xxx 0000:17:00.0: LOOP DOWN detected (2).
rport-0:0-0: blocked FC remote port time out: saving binding
rport-0:0-1: blocked FC remote port time out: saving binding
sd 0:0:1:3: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 90388157
device-mapper: multipath: Failing path 8:16.
sd 0:0:1:3: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000
end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 90388669
sd 0:0:1:3: SCSI error: return code = 0x00010000

scsi error 10000 is a DID_NOT_CONNECT error, but I don't know ho to solve this.

Thanks
Davide