First the facts:

2 Dell Latitude C640 laptops, 1.6ghz 1gig memory
1 ethernet port
1 usb port

RHEL 4 update 2


The mission is to create an Oracle RAC cluster with these 2 beasts which means I will need an additional network interface for the private network, and access to shared storage, likely an external SCSI enclosure.

My initial thought was to use a USB network adapter for the private network, and then get a pcmcia scsi controller to handle the storage.

After purchasing the Linksys usb200m, and then doing a search here to see what I needed to do to get it working, finding out that it apparently doesn't work I'm rethinking my strategy.

Any suggestions? Has anyone set this type of config up before? Should I go with a USB SCSI solution and get a pcmcia network adapter? My concern there is the USB ports on the laptop are 1.1=SLOW! so I'd be concerned about excessive I/O waiting.

Thanks for your help.

USB 1.1 only has a 12mb/s bus speed so it will be slow. Check the HCL for pcmcia devices at tuxmobil. Not a big selection nor is speed that much better. You can try using ndiswrapper to get your linksys device to work but I do not if it will.

http://tuxmobil.org/pcmcia_linux_types.html

Thanks for the response Michael. Based on that list, the Adaptec 1460 is a type II PCMCIA card which works, and leaves me a slot for another type II device. I'd obviously like this to be a NIC, bit I didn't see a recommendation on the list you included.

Any recommendations on a type II pcmcia 10/100 card?

Thanks

I have an old 3Com PCMCIA card that works but I do not remember the model number. I will have to post it later.

Ok, so I got all the hardware, and the interface cards work. The Adaptec slimSCSI 1460 cards are listed on that site as working, and appear to be recognized, but the aha152x_cs module isn't found.

pcmcia seems to be working fine, I run "cardctl status" and get the cards listed, and also "cardctl ident" and it sees
"APA-1460 SCSI Host Adapter","Version 0.01"
manfid: 0x012f, 0x0002

However, the Hardware Browser utility shows the card under unknown devices, and it doesn't seem to recognize the HD I've attached.

Looking in /var/log/messages, I see:

cardmgr[1989]: executing: 'modprobe aha152x_cs 2>&1' <30>
cardmgr[1989]: + FATAL: Module aha152x_cs not found
cardmgr[1989]: modprobe exited with status 1
cardmgr[1989]: module /lib/modules/2.6.9-22.EL/pcmcia/aha152x_cs.o not available
cardmgr[1989]: bind 'aha152x_cs' to socket 0 failed: Invalid argument


And sure enough the directory /lib/modules/2.6.9-22.EL/pcmcia isn't there.

There is /lib/modules/2.6.9-22.EL/kernel/drivers/scsi/aha152x.ko

How do I get this to work?

Thanks

Ok,

The deal is the card doesn't work with RHEL4 (at least not yet) I reinstalled with RHEL3, and installed the kernel-unsupported rpm, and found and loaded the module no problemo.

It is supported as far as I know. It is just not part of the current precompiled rpm kernel packages.

The module is not part of the current default precompiled kernels. It would be located here if it was built.
ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/scsi/pcmcia/
The named aha152x_cs.ko

You will need to recompile the kernel. There are many post here on the subject but this is what I do.
If the kernel is the default installed kernel from the install then you can install the rpm package kernel-devel-2.6.9-22.EL.rpm off the cd or from Redhat site.

To install run the command as root. ' rpm -ivh kernel-devel*.rpm '

Now to rebuild the kernel.
Goto /usr/src/2.6.9-22.EL or it may be /usr/src/linux-2.6.9-22.EL
Run the command ' make xconfig '
Now at the top select File > Open.
Select the file in /boot called ' config-2.6.9-22.EL '.
Now goto the Scsi Device Support > Pcmcia Scsi Device Support > Select the aha1524x
Select as a dot in the square this will make it a module. A check is built into the kernel image.
Now Select File > Save
The select File > Quit.

Now to build the kernel run the command ' make '. This will build the kernel image and modules. It will take a while. 20 to 40 minutes depending on the machine.

Next run the command ' make modules_install ' which will install the modules in /usr/lib/`uname -r`

Last run the command ' make install '. This places the kernel image in /boot, copies the system.map to /boot which is used to located modules that the kernel is aware of, and adds to the grub boot manager if it is needed.

Shutdown and reboot. Make sure to select the new kernel if it created a new one in the list. Being the same version it may not do this.

Now do the ' /sbin/modprobe aha152x_cs '

Brian