New RHEL4 ES Kernel - Now SATA Not Recognized

[Frank Sfalanga]

On a brand new install we used the HP provided diskette to install SATA drivers. We booted the machine on the RHEL4ES CDROM and at the prompt typed: linux updates dd - worked great!

After the install we ran up2date and it upgraded the kernel from 2.6.9-5ELsmp to 2.6.9-34ELsmp now it comes up and kernel panics. This is not a disaster as GRUB rocks and lets us boot to the old kernel without problems but ...

We'd like to use the new kernel, I assume we need a new initrd.img with the SATA driver included or something? How do I work this?

Is there a special kernel or command line argument I should use to get the driver installed for this kernel?

Thanks.

[Frank Sfalanga]

More information ...

This is a brand new HP Proliant DL320 G4 which uses the embedded SATA controller. It has two 80GB SATA drives configured in a bootable RAID 1 configuration. We got the original driver from HP here:

http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/23565.html

After upgrading the kernel using the RPM from RedHat bofo - nothing.

This machine boots from the SATA drives. The fact that we're getting a kernel panic tells me that the kernel (on the SATA drives) is being found. Just an incompatible driver?

Ideas?

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

As far as I see, HP doesn't provide [yet] SATA driver for the latest RHEL4 update:
http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/locate/1116_6163.html#11 - the latest drivers they provide are for RHEL4 update 1 - http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/23572.html.

So you should wait with the new kernel some time while HP will release updated drivers.
unfortunately, this is a situation with a binary kernel modules :-(

Rgds,
Vitaly

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

You can not use that kernel until HP supports it.

You need custom sata drivers from HP. I don't know why, other vendors don't require that but you own what you own.

SEP

[Frank Sfalanga]

It seems pretty obvious that binary drivers suck. Maybe in the future HP will do more business with hardware vendors who GPL their drivers. In the future I'll be spending more time researching the servers our company purchases.

On boot my kernel messages say "tainted kernel" - I blame Adaptec for this. For a company that's been around this long to not embrace the FOSS system is aweful. Period. Wake up.

I like that the BCM5700 Ethernet drivers are GPLed allowing source RPMs to be available.

Keep up the good work HP - you're moving in the right direction. Now let's pick up the pace a little.