Centos 5 / linux on poweredge 2400

[Jim Nelson]

Emanuel Salagean wrote:
> Hi,
> It's my first time with an Dell Poweredge.
> I have to install a linux distribution (preferably centos 5), on a Dell 
> Poweredge 2400 , with a poweredge expandable raid controller perc 2/dc.
> I tried with centos 5, but i seem that it hasn't the drivers for my scsi 
> raid adapter.
> Please tell me with distro has it, or how can i install a linux version 
> on this scsi adapter.
> Thank you!
> 

You will have to use a driver disk - RHEL does not ship with the drivers for 
them compiled in.

If you want to roll your own, you can use the utility here:

http://people.redhat.com/linville/ddiskit/

It makes generating the disk images you need to install RH-based systems very 
easy.  You will need to build the megaraid_legacy module, and include that in 
the driver disk creation.

To use one of these install disks, you need to enter the following command at 
the initial boot screen for the install CD:

linux dd

This will allow you to load driver images from an external device early in the 
install process, before the GUI starts up.  So far, I've used USB and built-in 
floppies, and USB flash drives with the images it generates.

I've rarely had to do it, and the documentation on how to pull it off is *very* 
sparse - we use Areca RAID cards in some of our whitebox servers, and the 
drivers for those were not included in the mainline kernel until 2.6.19.

The one PERC/2-eqipped machine we've installed Linux on is running Slackware 
11.0 - I know the 2.4 kernel it ships with supports them, and I think the 2.6 
kernel does as well....

Jim