megaraid problems

eantoranz · 03-05-2007, 11:41 AM

I'm working on a rather old server (2 Pentium II 350 + 256 MBs of ram). I tried to update to ubuntu dapper, but I can't make it boot because the support for megaraid is broken. I want to use another kernel that had megaraid support built in (not modular). The ones I have at hand only have it by modules (knoppix 5.0, a 2.6.20 experimental kernel from debian). I even tried downloading the source and configure it by hand, but when I try to include the megaraid support (in menuconfig) I always get a message that says that there's a dependency that is "mocular" so megaraid will be built modularized. :-S What can I do to solve it?

Right now, the box can't boot.

I tried booting with knoppix 5.0 and copying the kernel / modules. The box starts to boot, but it fails miserably because megaraid is modular. Any "express" ideas I can work on?

TB0ne · 03-05-2007, 12:54 PM

I had the same problem here, also with a Megaraid controller, on older hardware. I wound up running mkinitrd, and putting the module in there, so it would load at boot time. Seems to work well.

eantoranz · 03-05-2007, 02:24 PM

Tell me about it... cause I have never done that.

What I did to reboot it (just a while ago) was to build a kernel with megaraid legacy support included and ext3 included too. It has just booted... but I'd like to hear about other ways as well.

Quakeboy02 · 03-05-2007, 02:40 PM

Is this device what is also known as FakeRaid? If so, there is hope for you with the package called DMRAID. I notice that the DMRAID pages mention Megaraid. Here is the ubuntu help page that I used to install Debian Etch to a Promise FastTrak66. If your Megaraid is the same sort of device (and I think it is) then this page should work for you, as well.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto

eantoranz · 03-05-2007, 03:19 PM

In my case it's not a "fake" raid. It's a real one on a SCSI controller:
0000:02:09.0 SCSI storage controller: Adaptec AHA-2940U2/U2W / 7890/7891

from dmesg:

Code:

megaraid: found 0x8086:0x1960:bus 2:slot 6:func 1
scsi0:Found MegaRAID controller at 0xd080c000, IRQ:18
megaraid: [O41F:1.28] detected 1 logical drives.
megaraid: channel[0] is raid.
scsi0 : LSI Logic MegaRAID O41F 254 commands 16 targs 4 chans 7 luns
megasas: 00.00.03.05 Mon Oct 02 11:21:32 PDT 2006
scsi0: scanning scsi channel 0 for logical drives.
scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     MegaRAID LD0 RAID0  8682R O41F PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
.
.
.
SCSI device sda: 17780736 512-byte hdwr sectors (9104 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sda: asking for cache data failed
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
SCSI device sda: 17780736 512-byte hdwr sectors (9104 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sda: asking for cache data failed
sda: assuming drive cache: write through
 sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 < sda5 sda6 sda7 >
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda

9 GBs. :S It's too small.... but gets the job done. ;-)

Quakeboy02 · 03-05-2007, 03:40 PM

So, what they've done is to add a chip to a 2940 controller then? It's very strange that a configured hardware raid wouldn't boot without loading some software first, but, ah well. Good luck!

TB0ne · 03-07-2007, 01:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eantoranz

Tell me about it... cause I have never done that.

What I did to reboot it (just a while ago) was to build a kernel with megaraid legacy support included and ext3 included too. It has just booted... but I'd like to hear about other ways as well.

The server I did this on was SuSE. I edited the /etc/sysconfig/kernel file, and there's a line marked "INITRD_MODULES", and I added the megaraid_old, megaraid, jbd, and ext3 modules there, like this:

INITRD_MODULES="megaraid_old megaraid jbd ext3"

I ran mkinitrd, and it rebuilt my ramdisk image in /boot/initrd (symlink to my real image). Reboots worked fine from that point on. You can also run the command from the command-line, and specify the modules using the -m switch, which will accomplish the same thing.