[olug] Slackware with HP(compaq) Smart Array 5i Controller

[Nick Walter]

I have a bunch of servers here with the Smart Array 5i/532 controllers
and haven't had any problems.  My servers are HP DL380G3s running a mix
of RH7.3 and RHAS 2.1.  We are using an HP supplied replacement for the
stock cciss driver.  I can't recall where we got it but the package name
is:

[sltest1:~]# rpm -qa |grep cpq
cpq_cciss_RedHat73-2.4.46-7

I use the Smart Array controller for my boot device also with GRUB as my
bootloader and that works just fine:

[sltest1:~]# mount
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/cciss/c0d0p5 on /test type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)

I'd suggest trying to find a better driver than the default one.  I'd
also advocate moving to GRUB.  Once you get used to it, it's much nicer
than LILO :)

-Nick Walter

On Mon, 2003-12-29 at 15:11, dthacker9 at cox.net wrote:
> We've just purchased a new email server at work.  I've made a couple of attempts to install slackware on it, with no success.  The controller is an HP (compaq?) Smart Array 5i connected to 4-18.2 GB disks.  I've configured the disks into 4 logical drives at RAID 0.  (I'm going to use LVM on them.)
> I booted Slackware 9.1 from CD, loaded the raid.s kernel and carved the disks up as follows with fdisk:
> /dev/cciss/c0d0p1   /boot   300MB
> /dev/cciss/c0d0p2   swap    2GB
> /dev/cciss/c0d0p3   /       rest of disk
> /dev/cciss/c0d1     /usr    entire disk
> /dev/cciss/c0d2     /var/spool/mail entire disk
> /dev/cciss/c0d3     /opt    entire disk
> 
> I then did a slack install, and set up LILO in the root partition.  (An earlier attempt to load in the MBR failed)
> The system just hangs.   I then loaded from my emergency boot floppy.  It appeared to start up and run through the boot process, but right before the point where I would get a login prompt I started to get screenfuls of 6 character strings surrounded by brackets.  The machine could not recover and had to be rebooted.  
> My hypothesis is that either a) LILO is hosed or b) I need a special driver for the SA 5i.  Anybody care to confirm and/or give me some pointers?
> 
> Thanks!
> Dave Thacker
> 
> 
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