Can you access Dell PERC4 controller BIOS via Linux
 

I have a server, which nobody knows anything about because "it just runs since the guy set it up", well that guy doesn't work here anymore. I have a Dell server with a PERC4 controller in it, and a drive died in the external array, and it appears to have flipped over to a hot spare. the server hasn't been restarted in over a year, so i was wondering if there was a way through RHEL CLI to look at the controller and raid setup, rather than rebooting and hitting control+whatever key while its booting. does anyone know?

Dell OpenManage Managed Node supports communications with the PERC controller. You can get status information from installing OpenManage (no reboot required in supported OS).

Some possible commands for information from the controller:

omreport storage controller
omreport storage adisk controller=0
omreport storage vdisk controller=0

omconfig controller action=rescan controller=0

You could also use the dellmgr utility for bios-like access ( the curses interface is very much the same as the bios). ftp://ftp.dell.com/scsi-raid/dellmgr-5.22-0.i386.rpm

-HTH

Great, thanks. I will check it out. I'll post back if I have any more questions.

I installed the one you gave the link to, then when I run dellmgr, all the menus are in funky characters so I can't tell what's what. Do I need to install something else so its all readable? when I hit Escape, all I could read was the Yes and No choices. I'm trying to do this through the CLI, I'll go try from the console also.

If you download perc-cerc-apps-6.03-A06.tar.gz from Dell, it has a newer version of dellmgr, which runs fine through the CLI.

If you are using PuTTY I recommend that you set the Translation:->Remote Character Set: to UTF-8

OK, thanks.