Luns not visible after upgrading RHEL5.1 to RHEL5.8

[nkldh]

Hi,

I am new to linux. One of our customer has upgraded the rhel5.1 to rhel5.8. Now he is not be able to see the luns presented to the server. He told me that linux drivers are not installing to kernel.

What can be done to resolve the same.

Thanks.

[Matti_Kurkela]

I guess your customer has installed a driver package from the HBA manufacturer. Linux driver packages can have very strict kernel version requirements. Often such driver packages are designed to recompile the driver if they detect an updated kernel, but they might refuse the attempt if the version difference is too great: in that case, you must get an updated driver package from the HBA manufacturer.

However, RedHat is generally very good at adding critical drivers (like HBA drivers) to the RHEL base distribution . If the HBA existed but was not supported at the time of RHEL 5.1 release, the chances are very good it will be supported by the base RHEL 5.8 release without any additional driver packages. But the driver package for RHEL 5.1 has installed an override that prevents the standard driver from loading, so that it can be replaced by the driver in the driver kit.

In other words: the driver package provided by the HBA manufacturer might have become obsolete, and the proper solution might be to remove the driver package completely. As the driver package is removed, it should automatically remove all the blacklist entries it originally placed to prevent the original RHEL 5.1 version of the respective HBA driver from loading. Once the blacklist entries are removed, the standard RHEL 5.8 driver should load and detect the LUNs.

Because you did not specify the HBA manufacturer and model, all of the above is just an educated guess.

If you need more help, you should disclose at least the HBA manufacturer & model, preferably the server manufacturer & model too.

[nkldh]

Thanks for this great information.

I checked the server. All the luns were visible. Actually customer was using fcinfo command to check the wwn no.

After upgrading from rhel5.1 to rhel5.8. This command was not giving any output after upgrading the Linux. I showed him hba card by running some other commands. Also showed him all the mounted volumes.

Thanks again.