Joseph L. Casale wrote:

...

I am trying to install CentOS 5.6 on HP DL 180 G6 which has HP Smart Array B110i SATA RAID Controller Driver. I have 4 * 500 GB SATA HDD and configured RAID 1+0 using System BIOS, the BIOS detects usable disk space as 940GB disk space, when i start installing the OS, it does not detect HP Smart Array B110i SATA RAID Controller Driver

That thing is a software raid setup iirc, although there is an rpm for it post install, you could use the ddkit from rhel to make a dd image but frankly I would just use mdraid, turn off the riad setup and just use AHCI.

Hmmm... if that's a software RAID, the o/s wouldn't see it, I would think, until it was up. In that case, I'd make a plain vanilla partition somewhere for /boot.

mark

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 9:14 PM, John Doe jdmls@yahoo.com wrote:

From: Kaushal Shriyan kaushalshriyan@gmail.com

...

I am trying to install CentOS 5.6 on HP DL 180 G6 which has HP Smart Array B110i SATA RAID Controller Driver. I have 4 * 500 GB SATA HDD and configured RAID 1+0 using System BIOS, the BIOS detects usable disk space as 940GB disk space, when i start installing the OS, it does not detect HP Smart Array B110i SATA RAID Controller Driver As per http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lan... Is there a way to get .iso file during installation of CentOS Linux ?

As mark said, did you create one (or more) logical drive(s) after you created the array? About the driver, they say: "The successful installation will replace the driver that shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5" which seems to imply that a working driver exists already... Also, remember for later that many hp tools/drivers do check the /etc/redhat-release for a specific Redhat release string... If they see "CentOS ..." instead of "Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5 (Tikanga)", it won't install.

JD

Hi again

So what i understand is disable RAID mode on the BIOS and enable AHCI mode and install the OS and install driver rpm and use the HP proprietary solution and it would be a software raid or use mdadm software RAID as provided by the OS ?

Please help me understand.

Regards,

Kaushal

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 4:27 AM, Joseph L. Casale jcasale@activenetwerx.com wrote:

...

Please help me understand.

If the device requires an additional driver, unless its packaged as a dd for use at install, how can you install and then add a driver?

Disable RAID mode, set it to AHCI, then Anaconda will see all the individual discs at which point during install you can choose to setup Linux md raid, far simpler and almost always better than software raid IMHO.

Recovery and monitoring facilities are built into Linux, life's just easier... _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

Hi Joseph L Casale

That thing is a software raid setup iirc, although there is an rpm for it post install, you could use the ddkit from rhel to make a dd image but frankly I would just use mdraid, turn off the riad setup and just use AHCI.

Thanks for the quick reply and explanation. You said use dd kit from rhel and create a linux device driver image and supply drivers during OS installation. dd command i suppose. Please further suggest.

I have extracted the rpm file and it has hpahcisr.o file. Am i understanding you correctly ?

Thanks again

Regards

Kaushal

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:33 PM, Simon Matter simon.matter@invoca.ch wrote:

...

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 4:27 AM, Joseph L. Casale jcasale@activenetwerx.com wrote:

...

...

Please help me understand.

If the device requires an additional driver, unless its packaged as a dd for use at install, how can you install and then add a driver?

Disable RAID mode, set it to AHCI, then Anaconda will see all the individual discs at which point during install you can choose to setup Linux md raid, far simpler and almost always better than software raid IMHO.

Recovery and monitoring facilities are built into Linux, life's just easier... _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

Hi Joseph L Casale

...

That thing is a software raid setup iirc, although there is an rpm for it post install, you could use the ddkit from rhel to make a dd image but frankly I would just use mdraid, turn off the riad setup and just use AHCI.

Thanks for the quick reply and explanation. You said use dd kit from rhel and create a linux device driver image and supply drivers during OS installation.  dd command i suppose. Please further suggest.

I have extracted the rpm file and it has hpahcisr.o file. Am i understanding you correctly ?

Hi Kaushal,

Maybe there's some kind of misunderstanding. The term software raid can be misleading because IMHO mdraid is also an software raid. So let's use the term fakeraid for those controllers which make one believe they do everything in their hardware but in fact simply do some kind of software raid in thier proprietary OS driver.

So, what you should try to find out is whether your controller is not usable in raid mode because the OS has no support for it (seems obvious) or if you set the controller into AHCI mode in BIOS, if the controller is usable by the OS without any additional driver.

So, go to the BIOS and set the disk controller to AHCI mode (if such setting exists) and try to install the OS. If you'll see any disks in this configuration, the just go with mdraid and you're done.

Simon

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the explanation. Please help me understand why do Hardware Vendors provide onboard storage raid controller chipset on the motherboard (fakeraid if its a software raid.). Is it a marketing term for selling servers. Since it does not add value at all strictly speaking due to the fact that the OS is unable to determine the Logical drives.

Awaiting your earnest reply.

Regards

Kaushal

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 8:10 PM, Kaushal Shriyan kaushalshriyan@gmail.com wrote:

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the explanation. Please help me understand why do Hardware Vendors provide onboard storage raid controller chipset on the motherboard (fakeraid if its a software raid.).  Is it a marketing term for selling servers. Since it does not add value at all strictly speaking due to the fact that the OS is unable to determine the Logical drives.

Awaiting your earnest reply.

Regards

Kaushal _______________________________________________

Frankly, that's something you'd need to ask the vendors directly. Everyone else can just give you speculation, or their idea of what they think the real reason behind this is.

That said, many onboard RAID chipsets work fine with various Linux distributions, and all of them work fine with Windows. In the case of Windows you also need to install the drivers while installing Windows. And this is cause the OS developers, whether Linux, UNIX or Windows don't always have the drivers readily available to include in the installation files but instead rely on the hardware developers to supply the drivers on disk, or on the internet.

John Doe wrote:

From: Kaushal Shriyan kaushalshriyan@gmail.com

...

Thanks for the explanation. Please help me understand why do Hardware Vendors provide onboard storage raid controller chipset on the motherboard (fakeraid if its a software raid.). Is it a marketing term for selling servers. Since it does not add value at all strictly speaking due to the fact that the OS is unable to determine the Logical drives. Awaiting your earnest reply.

My earnest reply would be that, like winmodems, winprinters and other hybrids, fakeraid is cheaper to manufacture since part of the device logic is done by the driver (at the expense of the server)... So yes, it would be marketing to say we do RAID, while saving on the manufacturing cost of a real raid controller... But dunno who to blame between the server or the motherboard manufacturers... or both. Another marketing ploy I hated was the old drives claiming a xxGB* capacity............ (*based on a 1:2 compression ratio).

Chipset makers are ones to blame for creating them in the first place, since they incorporated cheap RAID support in (almost) every HDD controller chipset. I guess the first one to do it is one to blame, the rest figured it is easier to implement it then explain it is not a healthy choice for data safe keeping.

Ljubomir