[CentOS] CentOS 5.5 does not recognise SAS drives with LSI 1068E Controller

[RedShift]

On 03/09/11 16:55, Peter Peltonen wrote:
> I need to do a new CentOS net install on a new server having the
> Supermicro X7DVL-3 motherboard:
>
>    http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/xeon1333/5000V/X7DVL-3.cfm
>
> Based on that info I assume the board having a "8x SAS Ports via LSI
> 1068E Controller". We received the server with 3 drives + 1 spare as
> hw RAID-5 preinstalled. During bootup I see that the drives are
> initialised and everything seems ok.
>
> The issue I am facing is that when trying to install CentOS no hard
> drives are recognised.
>
*snip*

> Best regards,
> Peter

That controller doesn't really support RAID, what you're getting is commonly called FakeRAID. It basically helps the BIOS to boot from the RAID arrays you create but leaves the actual RAID calculations etc... to the driver.

Configure the board in IT mode (Initiator/Target). That will disable the FakeRAID. It's jumper JPA2 just above the SAS ports. Once you've done that, clean the drives (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd? bs=1M) so no signatures from the FakeRAID BIOS remain. After that install CentOS as you would normally and use software RAID (which is better anyway).

By the way, the X7DVL-3 is a pretty old board, you say this is a new server? I hope you didn't pay alot of money for it.


Glenn