Installer Magic
For tips and tricks common to all types of storage, see Installer Magic
AACRAID
PowerEdge Servers With Aacraid-Supported ROMB Or Add-In
- PowerEdge 1650 - PERC3/Di - dual RAID channels, U160 SCSI
Please see the PE1650 Information Update
for instructions on what to pass to the aacraid module. If this fails, then you need
a newer aacraid driver or a newer distribution.
- PowerEdge 2400 - PERC2/Si - single RAID channel, Ultra2 SCSI
- PowerEdge 2450 - PERC3/Si - single RAID channel, U160 SCSI
- PowerEdge 2500 and 2500SC - PERC3/Di - dual RAID channels, U160 SCSI
- PowerEdge 2550 - PERC3/Di - dual RAID channels, U160 SCSI
- PowerEdge 2650 - PERC3/Di - dual RAID channels, U160 SCSI
Please see the
PE2650 Information Update
for instructions on what to pass to the aacraid module for RHL7.2. If this fails,
then you need a newer aacraid driver or a newer distribution. RHL7.3 or higher
recognize it automatically.
- PowerEdge 4400 - PERC3/Di - dual RAID channels, U160 SCSI
- PowerEdge 4600 - PERC3/Di - dual RAID channels, U160 SCSI
- PERC2 - quad-channel add-in RAID card, Ultra2 SCSI
- PERC 320/DC - dual-channel add-in RAID card, U320 SCSI, offered on Precision workstations
Mailing Lists
Drivers
Note: Use the mailing lists to get support for these drivers.
- aacraid for kernel 2.2.x
- aacraid for kernel 2.4.1 to 2.4.17-pre6
- aacraid is included in kernels 2.4.17-pre7 already.
enable CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL=y and CONFIG_SCSI_AACRAID={y,m}
- aacraid is included in kernels
2.6.x already. Mark Havercamp is
the maintainer, with assistance
from Mark Salyzyn.
enable CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL=y and CONFIG_SCSI_AACRAID={y,m}
Distributions
- Red Hat
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (kernel 2.6.9-5.EL and
above) includes aacraid. Until further notice,
newer versions of RHEL (>= 4) will also include aacraid.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 (kernel 2.4.21-4.EL and
above) includes aacraid.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 (kernel 2.4.9-e.3 and
above) includes aacraid.
- Red Hat Linux 9 (kernel 2.4.20-{6,8,9,16,...}) includes Alan Cox's aacraid. All existing
aacraid hardware install seamlessly with this.
- Red Hat Linux 8.0 (kernel 2.4.18-14) includes Alan Cox's aacraid. All existing
aacraid hardware, including PERC 320/DC, install seamlessly with this.
- Red Hat Linux 7.3 (kernel 2.4.18-3) includes Alan Cox's aacraid. Most existing
aacraid hardware, including PE1650 and PE2650 ROMBs, but excluding PERC 320/DC,
install seamlessly with this.
- Red Hat Linux 7.2 (kernel 2.4.7-10) includes aacraid (recent). This is the
recommended release and kernel.
- Red Hat Linux 7.1 (kernel 2.4.2-2) includes aacraid-030101
- Dell recommends upgrading to the 2.4.3-12 errata kernel.
- The aacraid driver in 2.4.9-6 and 2.4.9-12 errata kernels is buggy (see
NMI_DMA_0_ERROR and hang-at-fsck notes above). For this reason, Dell doesn't
recommend running these kernels with the aacraid driver at this time.
- For kernel 2.4.9-21 and 2.4.9-31, see note above.
- You need a Driver Disk
to install on the PE1650 and PE2650 (works with 7.1 retail and SBE).
- Red Hat Linux 7 (kernel 2.2.16-22, and errata kernel 2.2.17-14) includes aacraid
v1.0.6. To install on a PowerEdge 2500 or 2550, you need a
Driver Diskette and the
installation instructions.
If you're upgrading to Red Hat Linux 7, the upgrade should "just work".
- Red Hat Linux 6.2 and 6.1
- To install Red Hat Linux 6.1 SBE2, 6.2 Retail, 6.2 SBE1, or 6.2 SBE2
with the percraid driver, you'll need the percraid driver disk.
- If you're upgrading from Red Hat Linux 6.2 which uses the closed-source
percraid driver, to a Red Hat Linux 6.2 errata kernel (2.2.16-{3,4}), you
need to change your /etc/conf.modules file to reflect the name change from
percraid to aacraid, and rebuild your initial ramdisk (mkinitrd). I
recommend the Red Hat Linux 7 kernel instead, as the aacraid v1.0.3 driver
in 2.2.16-{3,4} has an SMP problem which is corrected in v1.0.6.
- If you installing Red Hat Linux 6.2 SBE2 on a PowerEdge 1650 or 2650 (or
any previous PowerEdge servers), you can use a driver disk which contains
the aacraid driver v1.0.7. This is lightly tested by Dell, and falls under
the "if it breaks, you get to keep both pieces" policy. After installation,
we recommend you install sources for a recent Red Hat 2.2.x errata kernel,
add in a recent 2.2.x aacraid driver (see above), and build the driver for
this errata kernel.
aacraid-pe1650-pe2650-rh62sbe2.tgz
aacraid-pe1650-pe2650-rh62sbe2.tgz.sign
- Novell / SuSE
- SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (SLES 9) carries the aacraid driver.
- SuSE 7, 7.1, and 7.2 include the aacraid
driver. Install instructions for most PowerEdge
systems with 7 and 7.1.
Driver Disk and
Installation instructions
for PowerEdge 2500 and 2550, with thanks to Eric Miller.
- SuSE 7.2 includes the aacraid patch against 2.4.4 above. You need to use YaST1
to install.
- SuSE 7.3 includes the aacraid driver already. You need to use YaST1 to install.
- To install on a PE1650, you need to pass this option to the aacraid
driver:
perc_pciid=0x1028,0x0A,0x1028,0x011B
- To install on a PE2650, you need to pass this option to the aacraid
driver:
perc_pciid=0x1028,0x0A,0x1028,0x0121
- SuSE distributions prior to 8.0 do not automatically recognize the RAID
controller on the PE1650 or PE2650. See the distros section below for details.
- Debian
- Woody has the aacraid driver on the
default boot disks
bf-2.4 (2.4.18) and compact (2.2.20). (thanks to Curtis Nelson for pointing this
out).
- Kevin Traas provides install disks on his web site.
Does not support PE2500 or 2550 (yet).
- Debian 2.2 on PowerEdge 2550 mini-HOWTO
and boot floppies
by Ingemar Fallman.
- Manfred Brandl provides a Debian kernel with aacraid,
(including the interrupt fix patch), as well as Debian packages for the Gigabit
Ethernet cards from Broadcom and Intel driver on his site. Thanks Manfred!
- aacraid-enabled kernel can be downloaded from this debian ftp site
- Kristian Forde provides a Debian kernel 2.4.9 with aacraid
- Steve Mickeler has provided a Debian Woody netinst image for PE1650 and PE2650.
See the distros section below for details.
- Mandrake 8.0
- Includes aacraid drivers for their 2.4.x and 2.2.x kernels.
- Slackware 8.0
- Caldera OpenLinux 3.1.1
- FreeBSD
- Solaris x86
Management Utility
Firmware
When in doubt, consult
http://support.dell.com/filelib, choosing "Not
Applicable" under OS (as firmware isn't specific to any one OS).
Megaraid SCSI
Dell sells a number of RAID cards or ROMBs which use the LSI (formerly AMI) MegaRAID
driver which is part of the stock 2.2.x,
2.4.x, and 2.6.x kernels.
N.B.: PERC 5 controllers use SAS (Serial
Attached SCSI), which uses the new
megaraid_sas driver. This is a new family of
products, and the tools used for managing the
SCSI RAID adapters do not work for the SAS
RAID adapters.
Add-in Types
- PERC II - dual-channel add-in card, Ultra SCSI (aka AMI MegaRAID 428) - no longer sold
- PERC2/SC - single-channel add-in card, Ultra2 SCSI (aka AMI MegaRAID 466) - no longer
sold
- PERC2/DC - dual-channel add-in card, Ultra2 SCSI (aka AMI MegaRAID 467)
- PERC3/SC - single-channel add-in card, U160 SCSI
- PERC3/DCL - dual-channel add-in card, U160 SCSI, no battery-backed cache
- PERC3/DC - dual-channel add-in card, U160 SCSI with battery-backed cache
- PERC3/DCP - dual-channel add-in card, U160 SCSI with battery-backed cache - for use on
Precision workstations
- PERC3/QC - quad-channel add-in card, U160 SCSI with battery-backed cache (aka AMI/LSI
MegaRAID 471)
- CERC ATA100/4CH - Cost-Effective RAID Controller - ATA100 quad-channel add-in card
- PowerEdge 2600 ROMB - PERC4/Di - dual-channel U320 SCSI with battery-backed cache -
Requires driver v1.18a or above
- PERC4/SC - single channel add-in
card, U320 SCSI - Requires
driver 1.18f or above, 1.18k or above
is recommended
- PERC4/DC - dual channel add-in card, U320 SCSI with battery-backed cache - Requires
driver 2.03 or higher.
is recommended
- PERC4/QC - quad channel add-in card, U320 SCSI with battery-backed cache - Requires
driver 2.03 or higher
ROMB Types
- PowerEdge 1750 ROMB - PERC4/Di - dual channel, U320 SCSI with battery-backed cache -
Requires driver 1.18f or above, 1.18k or above is recommended.
- PowerEdge 2600 ROMB - PERC4/Di - dual-channel U320 SCSI with battery-backed cache -
Requires driver v1.18a or above
- PowerEdge 2750 ROMB - PERC4/Di - dual channel, U320 SCSI with battery-backed cache -
Requires driver 1.18f or above, 1.18k or above is recommended.
- PowerEdge 2800, PowerEdge 2850, PowerEdge 1850 - PERC4e/Di - dual channel, U320
SCSI, PCI Express, with battery-backed cache. Requires megaraid2 driver 2.00.3 or higher on 2.4.x kernels.
On 2.6.x kernels (x < 9), there is no
driver for these adapters. On 2.6.x kernels (x >= 9) use the
'megaraid_mbox' and 'megaraid_mm' drivers.
Mailing Lists
Drivers
Note: Use the mailing lists to get support for these drivers.
- LSI maintains the most recent megaraid-series drivers in the kernel.org SCSI development tree. If you're looking for the cutting-edge drivers, copy them out of Andrew Morton's -mm patchset from kernel.org.
- LSI posts historical copies of the megaraid driver for 2.4.x and 2.5.x kernels
on their FTP server. You should use
these instead of the older driver versions below.
- Dell posts updated megaraid drivers on support.dell.com
- Archived older versions of the driver for 2.2.x and 2.4.x can be found in
the megaraid directory. (You need a patch from the mailing
list from 2 January 2003 to build with 2.2.x kernels.) A development-level megaraid 2.00
driver for 2.4.x and 2.5.x kernels is available in the
megaraid directory.
Distributions
- kernel.org distributed kernels
- LSI engineers maintain the megaraid_mbox driver in kernel 2.6.x. This supports Dell PERC 3 and PERC 4 series cards. Older PERC 2 and earlier cards can be made to work with the megaraid_legacy (name as of 2.6.16, formerly 'megaraid') driver, though their use is unsupported by Dell or LSI. Report issues to the public mailing list linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org.
- Marcelo's 2.4.x-stock contains
megaraid and megaraid2 drivers. megaraid2 is preferred, especially
for PERC 3 and PERC 4 cards.
- Red Hat
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (kernel 2.6.9-5.EL and above) includes the 'megaraid_mbox' driver for all PERC 3 and PERC 4 series cards. Support for older PERC 2 and earlier generation cards has been dropped.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3
(kernel 2.4.21-4.EL and
above) includes megaraid and also megaraid2.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 AS (kernel 2.4.9-e.3) includes megaraid v1.18, and
works with most LSI/AMI MegaRAID controllers, except PE2600, 1750, 2750 PERC4/Di
(ROMB), and the PERC4/SC cards. For these, you'll need the 'megaraid_2002' driver
disk available from Red Hat on their support pages.
- errata kernel 2.4.9-e.12 includes a new megaraid_2002 driver (v2.00.2)
which supports PE2600 ROMB too.
- Driver disks for installing are available at
http://www.redhat.com/security/notes/.
Use 'expert noprobe dd' at the boot: prompt, and manually choose the
megaraid_2002 driver
first, then any other drivers you need, like
e1000. Because this driver disk is broken, it
installs the uniprocessor driver into the SMP
kernel. To fix this, after using the driver
disk, boot into the uniprocessor kernel,
upgrade to the latest errata kernel, which
will remake your initrds with good drivers,
then reboot again.
- Red Hat Linux 9 (kernels 2.4.20-6 or 2.4.20-8) includes megaraid v1.18f, and
works with all LSI/AMI MegaRAID controllers, including PERC3 and PERC4.
- Red Hat Linux 8.0 (kernel 2.4.18-14) includes megaraid v1.18d, and works with
all PERC2, PERC3, and PERC4/Di on PowerEdge 2600 LSI/AMI MegaRAID controllers, but
not PERC4/Di on PowerEdge 1750 and 2750. For PERC4/Di, get the
1.18h driver disk.
- Red Hat Linux 7.3 (kernel 2.4.18-3) includes megaraid v1.18a, and works with
all PERC2 and PERC3-series LSI/AMI MegaRAID controllers, but not PERC4/Di
on PowerEdge 2600, 1750 or 2750. For PERC4/Di, get the
1.18f driver disk.
- Driver Disk
for Red Hat Linux 6.2 Retail or SBE2 for use with all megaraid cards. Untar this
onto a FAT-formatted floppy so all the files are in the top-level directory. Install
using 'expert'. Dell hasn't done a lot of testing with this, but we think it's OK.
Use at your own risk.
- Novell / SuSE
- SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (SLES 9) carries the megaraid_mbox driver for use on Dell PERC4 and higher adapters. Dell has not tested PERC 3 adapters on SLES9, but in general it should work fine (as it does in RHEL4).
- Debian
Management Utility
-
perc-cerc-apps-6.03-A06.tar.gz
includes Dellmgr-5.31, linflash-3.01,
Megamon-4.0-0a, percsnmp-4.09-1
(Search support.dell.com for R71524).
- Older releases
- lin_apps_a04.tar.gz
includes dellmgr 5.22, linflash 2.14, megamon 3.6, and percsnmp-4.06. (Search
support.dell.com for R49828).
- CERC_LinApps-5.22.tar.gz
includes dellmgr 5.22, linflash 2.10, megamon 3.6, and percnmp 4.06. This is a
useful set of utilities for managing, monitoring, and upgrading your controller.
- megaraid-CERC_ATA100.tar.gz
includes dellmgr 5.16, linflash 2.05, megamon 3.0, megarac 1.00 and percnmp 4.02.
- megaraid-util-rh7.3.tar.gz
includes dellmgr 5.11, megaflash 2.01, megamon 2.6, and megaraid-snmp 3.00. This is a
useful set of utilities for managing, monitoring, and upgrading your controller.
- dellmgr-5.11-1.tar.gz same
as in the above RPM, in .tar.gz format. By popular request. To preserve the path,
extract as: tar -Pxvzf dellmgr-5.11.1.tar.gz
- DellMgr v5.07a
for PERC 3/SC, 3/DCL, 3/DC, 3/QC, 2/SC, 2/DC
- megamgr
management utility for PERC 2/SC, 2/DC (depreciated)
- John Reuning wrote a Netsaint plugin
to monitor megaraid arrays.
Firmware
You may need new firmware for your MegaRAID-based cards. In particular, the PERC2/SC firmware older
than v3.13 has known problems, and recent (>=2.2.16, >=2.4.x) kernels require the PERC2/SC
firmware to be upgraded before use. The driver will tell you so if needed.
When in doubt, consult
http://support.dell.com/filelib, choosing "Not
Applicable" under OS (as firmware isn't specific to any one OS).
SAS RAID and non-RAID
The new PERC 5 RAID controllers use SAS
(Serial Attached SCSI), and a new driver,
megaraid_sas. The new SAS 5 non-RAID
controllers use a new driver, mptsas, part of
the mptfusion driver family. Both drivers are
included in kernel.org 2.6.x kernels, and have
been backported to the RHEL3 2.4.21-x kernels.
Use OMSA 5.1 or higher, including the OM
Storage Services component, to manage your
PERC 5 (and earlier) controllers.
The PERC 5 SAS RAID adapters cannot use the
same LSI management tools as their SCSI RAID
counterparts (PERC 4 and earlier). Instead,
use the new LSI SAS RAID tools: MegaCLI, MegaRAID Storage Manager, MegaRAID SAS SNMP.
QLogic
QLogic now posts their drivers in DKMS RPM format.
You can download them from ftp.qlogic.com and
see them on EMC's list
of qualified QLogic drivers.
To remain an EMC qualified solution you should be sure to check the list of qualified kernels on
EMC's support matrix.
Emulex
Emulex now posts their drivers in DKMS RPM format. See them on EMC's list of
qualified Emulex drivers.
To remain an EMC qualified solution you should be sure to check the list of qualified kernels on
EMC's support matrix.
IEEE1394 (firewire)
For those using RHEL3, the native ieee1394 driver has quite a number of instability issues. To
address this, John Hull has put together a dkms-enabled update RPM for the driver based off of
the updated code found in the 2.4.25 kernel. It also includes the necessary hotplug script hooks
to allow you to use your ieee1394 device with devlabel to assure device naming consistency.
The RPM (it's in the tarball) can be found at
ftp://ftp.dell.com/rmsd/ieee1394-2.4.25-1.tar.gz.
SATA
Precision 370 with SATA Drives
For Linux kernels 2.6.15 and higher, you can use AHCI mode and the ata_piix module.
The Linux kernel (ata_piix module) < 2.6.15 has no support for the
Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) available on the Intel ICH6R
SATA controller for the Precision 370. The symptom of this problem
will be that the OS installer will not find any SATA hard drives to
partition, and will not be able to access the drives at all. To work
around this issue until AHCI support is released, you must switch the
controller mode from "AHCI" to "ATA" mode (aka legacy mode). Perform
the following steps:
- Reboot the system, enter the system BIOS setup by pressing F2 at
the Dell splash screen.
- From the BIOS menu, selct "Drives", and then select "SATA
Operation".
- Choose "RAID Autodetect/ATA"
- Save your changes, and then reboot the system.
CERC SATA 2S
CERC SATA 2S
The CERC SATA 2S RAID controller is a combination BIOS and
driver-based software RAID solution, which uses the system
motherboard's SATA controllers. It is not a hardware RAID
solution such as the aacraid and megaraid controllers listed above.
Systems with this controller include the PowerEdge 800, SC1425, and 420SC.
Under Windows and Netware, there are special device drivers which
operate in conjunction with the system BIOS to present the system SATA
disks as a RAID volume.
Under Linux, the disks should be treated as two independent disks,
which use the standard Linux "MD" software RAID layer for RAID 0 or 1
operation (if you so desire).
System Documentation on support.dell.com describe how to configure
the system BIOS to either disable the RAID mode, or to set up the
disks as two independent RAID volumes (effectively disabling the BIOS
software RAID feature).
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Disclaimer
This webpage is for informational purposes only, may contain typographical errors, technical
inaccuracies, and information about configurations which are not officially supported by Dell. The
content is provided as is, without express or implied warranties of any kind.
Please send comments/corrections to the linux-poweredge@dell.com public
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