RH9 on PE2900

Tue Aug 1 08:33:24 CDT 2006

Harald,

The web server won't let me download the patches.     I also have a RH 7.2
version of the bnx2 driver version 1.4.36b if you want to host it on the
web site (it's just the bnx2.c file).

Everyone else,

Those patches were made by me.  They are based on the rhel3-ga.patch as
supplied in the dkms package.  I gave the RH72 patches to Matt a while ago
to post on the linux.dell.com website.   I have successfully used this
megaraid_sas driver to load RedHat 7.2 onto a PE2900 chassis using the NFS
Anaconda install method with a bootable installation CDROM based on
bootnet.img.   That said, it took a lot more work than just compiling this
driver in order to get RH72 loaded on the system.
  I had to:
    1. update the RH network install image file (bootnet.img) to a newer
kernel (I used 2.4.20-28.7 which is the last official kernel released by
Red Hat before they stopped supporting 7.2) and drivers.   This then got
burned to a CDR.
    2. update the NFS-installation server to include the new kernel (and
other updated packages) in the RedHat/RPMS/ directory (and remove
2.4.7-10).
    3. update the hdlist and hdlist2 files using 'hdgenlist' so Anaconda
would install the new kernel during installation.
    4. update the stage2.img to include the new kernel drivers.
    5. add scripting to my kickstart post section to copy the megaraid_sas
and bnx2 drivers to /mnt/image/lib/modules/2.4.20-28.7/...,  rebuild the
initrd image to include the megaraid_sas driver, depmod -a, etc. (since
2.4.20-28.7 has no clue what megaraid_sas or bnx2 are).

This took a lot of work, but in the end I can install RH7.2 onto my PE2900
and pretend as if RH7.2 supported it natively.   And it was a lot of fun
learning how to update the installation to use the new kernel and package
updates.

Why did I update to 2.4.20-28.7 instead of just using the default 2.4.7-10
kernel version?   Because 2.4.7-10 cannot support new drivers.  It's
missing too many macros, functions, and structures.

Disclaimer:    I disclaim any and all responsibility to the usefulness or
purposeness of these patches.  They work for me.  If they work for you too,
great.  If they break, you get to keep both pieces.   They are released
under the same terms as the original files.

Please direct all comments like "Why are you running such an old distro?"
and "You need to upgrade." to /dev/null.

- Brian

                    <Harald_Jensas at dell.co                                                                                  
                    m>                            To:     <smooge at gmail.com>                                                
                    Sent by:                      cc:     linux-poweredge at lists.us.dell.com                                 
                    linux-poweredge-bounce        Subject:     RE: RH9 on PE2900                                            
                    s at dell.com                                                                                              

                    08/01/2006 02:56 AM                                                                                     

> On 7/30/06, Greg Dickie <greg at max-t.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >   I thought I saw someone who had done this but can't find
> it now. Has
> > anyone managed to get RH9 or older on a PE2900? If so,
> where did you
> > get the megaraid_sas and bnx2 drivers, etc?
> >
> > Thanks alot,
>
> I doubt very much you will be able to get RHL-9 on anything
> older than a 2850/2800 systems from about a year ago. Your
> best bet would be to get RHEL-3/Centos-3 on the system.. as
> they are pretty much RHL-9 with some tweaks.
>

There is a patch/backport of the megasas driver for RH 7.2.
http://linux.dell.com/files/megaraid_sas/rhl7.2-backport/

This and the RHEL 3 megasas driver package,
http://ftp.us.dell.com/SAS-RAID/mega_r3.tgz, might help you if you _have_
to run RH 9.

The bnx2 driver, I can not find anything pre RHEL 3.

//
Harald Jensås

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