HP-LX install and RAID

[kamikaze_1]

I'm trying to install HP-LX on a PC with RAID disks (0). After a while i get an error message saying that no block devices where found and the install reboots. I believe this is because the kernel that is booted as default from the install cd has no raid support, am I correct? How do i solve it? Is there a kernel included on the cd-rom that has raid support?

[Kodjo Agbenu]

Hello,

Are you using a hardware RAID controller or do you try to configure software RAID using kernel MD driver ?

If it is hardware RAID, please post information about the controller (manufacturer, model, ...) and also about the PC you are using.

Kodjo

[kamikaze_1]

It is a hardware raid controller EIO AP 1680 http://www.ivmm.com/eio/products_ap1680.html

Info about my system:
CPU: AMD XP 1600+(1400mhz)
Motherboard: Epox 8KHA+
Memory: 256MB DDR
HDD: 2xIBM 120GXP 40gb (in a stripped raid set (raid 0))

[Kodjo Agbenu]

Hello,

Actually, on the Inno Vision web they said that your RAID controller is supported with Linux. However, I was unable to find a suitable driver in the "official" kernel (even with other distributions than HP-LX).

Did you succeed having this card working with another Linux distro ? If yes, could you please tell me the name of the driver ?

I'll check this driver against the kernel that ships with HP-LX and see if it is included.

Also if you have another Linux distro running on the top of this card, please post the result of "lspci" command.

Good luck.

Kodjo

[kamikaze_1]

I got this raid card a couple of days ago, so I havn't tryed it in an other dist. Is there any generic driver?

[Kodjo Agbenu]

Hello,

Go to http://groups.google.com and type the following words in the search form :

AP-1680 raid danielson


This is the only valuable information that I found about your RAID controller.

How do I understand this ? The RAID controller is an IDE device. However, it is better to use it as an scsi device. I guess you have a single processor machine, so the RedHat 7.1 installator used by HP-LX is not automatically loading all drivers for SCSI RAID controllers.

During the install process, if you can choose an SMP kernel (generally named "Enterprise" by RedHat), then choose it. Otherwise, you are unlucky...


Good luck.

Kodjo

[kamikaze_1]

After a couple of hours of searching i found that the kernel needed too be compiled with CMD64xxx support (SIL0680), and ther kernel also needed to be patched with the most recent IDE patch since the one inte the 2.4.18 kernel wasn't recent enough. I'm gonna try this, but I have an other question. WHen I've created a new bootdisk with this how do i start the install (from linux)?

[Kodjo Agbenu]

Hello,

I tried to boot the HP-LX install cd and was surprised to see that, unlike "normal" redhat install procedure, there is no way to insert your own driver floppy.

Therefore, it can get very hard to install HP-LX on top of your system. If you want to play, I can give you the general idea of what I would have done.

First, on a Linux machine up and running, install the official 2.4.2 sources for RedHat 7.1. Patch these sources using the CMD64x code and compile this as a module.

On the HP-LX install CD, you will find boot.img in /images directory. The idea is to re-create your own boot image floppy by customizing this one.

The boot.img file represents a loop device (filesystem inside a single file). Mount it like this :

mount /mnt/cdrom
cp /mnt/cdrom/images/boot.img /tmp
mkdir /test
mount -oloop /tmp/boot.img /test
umount /mnt/cdrom

Then you will have to un-pack the initial ramdisk as follows :

cp /test/initrd.img /tmp/initrd.img.gz
gunzip /tmp/initrd.img.gz
mkdir /test2
mount -oloop /tmp/initrd.img /test2
cd /test2/modules

The modules.cgz file in /test2/modules is a g-zipped cpio archive. You will have to add your cmd64x module into it (I don't remember the syntax for cpio so have a look in the 10kms long manpage...).

Then put back your modified modules.cgz in /test2/modules. Edit /test2/modules/module-info, modules.dep and pcitables accordingly.

Then unmount the initrd and put it back to your floppy image as follows :

cd /test
umount /test2
gzip /tmp/initrd.img
mv /tmp/initrd.img.gz /test/initrd.img

Then unmount the new floppy image and put it on a 1.44 floppy disk as follows :

cd /
umount /test
dd if=/tmp/boot.img of=/dev/fd0 bs=1k

Your floppy is ready for booting. However, if I were you, I would not spend so much time doing this (except for playing and learning).

Good luck.

Kodjo