Legacy Hardware (LH4) Configuration Problem

[A.J. Budge-Reid]

I wish to use a redundant NetServer LH4 as a base machine for learning Linux System Administration.

The machine has an HP Netraid card (Megaraid) installed with a RAID 1 array and RAID 5 array configured. The original configuration has Warp Server installed and working, booting to OS from OS/2 Boot Manager on RAID 1 array. (Data on RAID 5 array)

The On-board Symbios SCSI was not in use or required so I added a fixed drive to the available controller for use with Debian, the chosen tutorial platform.

I believe I now have a conflict with SCSI controllers and drive identification since I added the additional drive.

I can see it, create logical drives on it using Warp LVM and format it but Debian has problems seeing RAID arrays as such and sees them as discrete drives.

Before I waste time on the Debian installation please could somebody let me know if there are configuration issues with any of the systems BIOS which must be changed before I try Debian Installation again.

[Chris Rosan]

I've got Redhat running on an old LC2000 and it works fine.

[A.J. Budge-Reid]

I shall rephrase the question.
There are two SCSI controllers on the LH4, the first an on board Symbios and the second a PCI HP Netraid (Megaraid) card. The latter controls the drives in the machine and is enabled bootable.

The BIOS for the on board Symbios controller has "Initial Boot Device" set "No" and this line in the configuration file cannot be altered. How can I make this controller bootable and turn off the boot from the PCI card?

[Chris Rosan]

I'm not totally familar with the bios on these devices, but you should just need to change the boot order. If the controller has it's own firmware/config tool you may need to set it to be "bootable".

Is the onboard SCSI controller a raid controller? If not i suggest you use the PCI one, especially for the "boot" volume. Hardware raid is MUCH better in my experience (and others experience) that software raid, even in linux. Linux software raid however is better than Windows software raid, as long as you set it up to notify you when it fails.

FYI - if you want to learn linux, a desktop PC or even a virtual machine is fine.

[A.J. Budge-Reid]

Thanks for the follow up. I think I really need somebody who is familiar with the actual machine. Am meanwhile searching manuals. I am using the hardware RAID PCI card as bootable. The on board controller is also hardware RAID but booting is disabled and when I go into the BIOS the line "Initial Boot Device No" cannot be changed. I guess there is a jumper or switch somewhere. Will probably change proposed volume configuration to one that works!
Regards,

[Chris Rosan]

Remember, if you're just wanting to use it to "learn", then you don't even need much hard drive space. I've got linux machines with 2GB hard drives, and 6GB is MORE than enough if you're not hosting any apps on it. It's still plenty for a "learning" webserver as well, as the biggest install is about 2.5G

[Kirstyn Fox]

There are several issues here.

First off, there is no support for some older legacy NetRaid controllers in Kernel 2.6

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=301411

2nd. My LH4r has actually 3 SCSI Bios that load. The Onboard SCSI, the HP NetRaid (Legacy Megaraid) and an AHA 29160U which can be used for booting static SCSI drives.

Personally I am currently booting CentOS 4, using the Legacy NetRaid kernel module compiled from older source with a 2 73GB drives mirrored partitioned as /var and 4 9.1GB drives RAID5 partitioned for /, swap, and /boot and everything works great for me! :)