Debian GNU/Linux on Dell Poweredge 2950 with PERC 5/i RAID

[Jason Martens]

On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 14:44 +0100, Bruno Savioli wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> I had the same problem, but in my case on a 1950.
> The driver in question is megaraid_sas, at least with my 1950.
> I poste a message a while ago saying exactly what I had done to fix it.
> See it below.
> 
> It should work with the 2950 as well.
> 

Thanks for the tip. That was indeed my problem, and I'm up and running
now.  So, debian works with etch at least. It would probably work fine
with sarge and the backports.org kernel too (which is 2.6.17 iirc).

Jason

> 
> ----
> I tried to install debian etch on a 1950 yesterday, the installation
> worked pretty well, but it froze during boot up.
> 
> As is guessed, the initrd that comes with etch  doesn have megaraid_sas
> on it.
> 
> I figured out a  small "hack" if you still want to use initrd(I haven't
> used yaird and I didn't have the option to do so during my install)
> 
> When the installation finishes, do not restart the machine.
> 
> Press CTRL+F2 and go the shell
> 
> "MAKE SURE YOU chroot INTO THE RIGHT ROOT PARTITION BEFORE RUNNING THESE
> COMMANDS"
> 
> $chroot to the root /target/"something" partition.
> 
> Edit "/etc/initramfs-tools/modules" and add "megaraid_sas" to the end of
> file.
> 
> Copy /boot/initrd.img-2.6.XXXX to /boot/initrd.img-2.XXXX.old
> 
> Run "update-initramfs -u" to update the current initrd to include the
> megaraid_sas modules.
> 
> 
> Reboot.... and that's it. A working debian etch on Dell 1950.
> 
> 
> I'm not sure if this has already been reported to Debian, I'll check it
> later.
> 
> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
> Bruno Savioli
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com
> [mailto:linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of Robert Goley
> Sent: 28 September 2006 22:59
> To: linux-poweredge at dell.com
> Subject: Re: Debian GNU/Linux on Dell Poweredge 2950 with PERC 5/i RAID
> 
> It sounds like the real problem is that the megaraid_mbox driver is not
> being 
> added to the initrd.  It should include all driver modules need for boot
> that 
> are not built into the kernel.  you can force modules into it by adding
> them 
> one per line to either the /etc/mkinitrd/modules or
> /etc/mkinitfs/modules 
> files and then running "dpkg-reconfigure
> linux-image-2.6.16-1-amd64-smp".  
> Fill in your correct kernel package information for the reconfigure
> command.
> 
> Robert
> 
> On Thursday 28 September 2006 11:49, Jason Martens wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, 2006-09-21 at 09:19 +0100, stephen mulcahy wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Is anyone here running Debian on a 2950? I'm curious to know how
> well it
> > > works before we go and purchase such a configuration.
> > >
> > > In particular, how well does the PERC 5/i RAID controller work (and
> what
> > > exactly is it hardware-wise?).
> > >
> > > I'm particularly concerned about the availability of tools for
> > > monitoring the health of the RAID array - am I sol if I try to get
> > > monitoring working with this on anything other than Red Hat / SuSE?
> > >
> > > Thanks for any comments you might have,
> >
> > I'm working on installing Debian on a 2950 right now.  So far, the
> etch
> > beta 3 installer detects the disks, but after I reboot into the new
> > system, the initrd can't detect the raid controller.  The installed
> > kernel is 2.6.16.  I need the megaraid_mbox driver right? When did
> that
> > get added to the kernel.org kernels?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Jason Martens
> >
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