LH3000 Netraid and disk corruption: still not solved

[Domenico Viggiani]

Hi,
as written in another posting, I'm still experiencing disk corruption on a LH3000 with Redhat 7.2 (all upgrades installed).
I know that historically Megaraid driver had many issues.
Any HP engineer is interested?

Domenico Viggiani

[Kodjo Agbenu · Accepted solution]

Hello Domenico,

The Netraid problem is not related to the distribution itself, but to the version of the megaraid.o driver.

The HP Netraid is supported since version 1.15c, which is first included in the kernel 2.4.10.

-> RedHat 7.1 shipped with kernel 2.4.2
-> RedHat 7.2 shipped with kernel 2.4.7
-> RedHat 7.3 shipped with kernel 2.4.18, but is not yet officially supported by HP.

Since the problem was discovered, HP has been delivering install disks with the modified megaraid.o driver.

However, all HP Netserver range of products is not yet supported with Linux. You can check the following URL for compatibility matrix :

http://www.hp.com/united-states/linux/products/matrices/netserver_matrix.html

Now, how can you solve your problem ?

=> You can install RedHat 7.3

=> You can create a RedHat module disk, using a patched kernel 2.4.2 with the right version of megaraid.o driver.

If you want to know how this module disk can be created, please post another question (it is not so easy, but feasible with a minimum of knowledge in kernel compile procedure, initial ramdisk, ...).

Good luck.

Kodjo

[Domenico Viggiani]

Thank you for your reply.
It is still not clear what version of Megaraid driver solves the issue. I have 1.18, enclosed in kernel 2.4.9-31 from Redhat and I know that there are no further versions.
If needed, I can also upgrade the system to Redhat 7.3.
However, I have a good experience with kernel compiling and, if you post instructions, I can try to create a module disk.

Bye from Italy
Domenico

[Kodjo Agbenu]

Hi Domenico,

If you want to create a module disk for RedHat install :

1. On another machine, install the kernel source code of RedHat 7.1 (it should be 2.4.2-??).

Go to /usr/src/linux/configs and copy the i386 configuration file into /usr/src/linux/.config

Go to /usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi and replace the megaraid.c and megaraid.h files with the ones with the fix (1.15c or higher).

Back to /usr/src/linux : make menuconfig. Go to scsi low-level drivers and make sure AMI Megaraid driver is marked to be compiled as a module. Save the configuration, just to make sure headers are re-generated.

Under /usr/src/linux, make clean && make dep && make modules


Now, you should have a module that matches the RedHat kernel.

To create the RedHat module disk, create a working directory :

mkdir /work
mkdir /work/2.4.2-2BOOT
cp /usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi.megaraid.o /work/2.4.2-2BOOT
cd /work
find 2.4.2-2BOOT | cpio -o -H crc >modules
gzip modules
mv modules.gz modules.cgz

Create a text file named "modinfo" with the 3 following lines :

megaraid
scsi
"AMI Megaraid"

Create a text file named "modules.dep" with the following line :

megaraid: scsi_mod

Insert a 1.44 MB floppy, format it with :

fdformat /dev/fd0H1440

Create a MSDOD filesystem on it :

mkdosfs /dev/fd0

Mount the floppy and copy the following data on it :

mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
cd /work
cp modules.cgz modinfo modules.dep /mnt/floppy/
umount /mnt/floppy

Now, your module disk is ready to be used for install.

Boot your RedHat install CD, then at prompt type "linux dd", where "dd" stands for "Driver disk". After 1 or 2 screens, you will be prompted for a driver floppy : insert the one you made before.

Hope that works.

Good luck.

Kodjo