AW: [Centos] 3Ware 9xxx 9500S-4LP SATA Raid with CentOS3.3?

Seth Bardash seth at integratedsolutions.org
Tue Feb 22 01:40:33 UTC 2005


> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at caosity.org 
> [mailto:centos-bounces at caosity.org] On Behalf Of Sven
> Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2005 9:32 PM
> To: 'CentOS discussion and information list'
> Subject: AW: AW: [Centos] 3Ware 9xxx 9500S-4LP SATA Raid with 
> CentOS3.3?
> Importance: High
> 
> Maybe i found a way that can work.
> On www.3ware.com i found this file
> 
> Red Hat Enterprise WS3 - Intel x86  (drivers only)
> 
> It contains the following files
> 
> 3w-9xxx.bot
> 3w-9xxx.hug
> 3w-9xxx.o
> 3w-9xxx.smp
> 
> Now the question. Is it possible to install these driver in 
> my Centos 3.3
> kernel 2.4.21-27.0.2.ELsmp?
> If yes exactly how? 
> 
> http://www.3ware.com/KB/article.aspx?id=11843
> I´ve found this way but i don´t know that it works with centos.
> 
> Thanks if anyone can help
> 
> 
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> 

Sven,

What you are trying to do will not work.

Centos will get installed because the the file "3w-9xxx.bot" will load
during boot time of the install. This will allow you to install the OS on
the 9500S but when you go to reboot it will probably hang during start up
because it could not find the correct driver for CentOS (not the same as
RHEL - the names have been changed to protect the innocent - although the
same driver will work).

BTW, Matt telling you to wait for Centos 4 is not a solution. CentOS 4 is
based on kernel-2.6.9-5.EL.i686.rpm - to the best of my knowledge this DOES
NOT contain the 3w-9xxx drivers. The drivers have been added to 2.6.10 and
later.

The easiest way to accomplish what you are trying is this:

Get an IDE disk of 80GB.

Install CentOS on this disk.

Create your array in the 9500 BIOS.

Install the source for the drivers on this drive 
and compile them for the same kernel you are going 
to use on the final install. 
	3ware's site has the directions for this.

Once this is done run modprobe 3w-9xxx.o

Then fdisk the array and make sure you can partition it the way you want.

	/boot - 100M or more
	swap  - 2000M
	/     - Rest of disk or most of disk if you want other partitions
	any other partition you may want

run mkfs for the appropriate filesystem type on each partition

Copy the IDE drive's files to the array and run grub-install on the array.

This will get you going.

I could write a book on how to do this and how to create boot driver disks
but no one would read it.

The other way to do what you want is to use an 8500 series card that is
compatible with the 3w-xxxx driver. Or just use an IDE disk for booting and
use the array for storage after you compile and install the driver for the
9500S.

If we had your machine here we could make the driver disks for you, install
CentOS and also publish them for eveyone else.

95% of the systems we build are AMD Opteron based as these run significantly
faster as file servers and web servers than the Xeons do. 

No flame wars please....  this is my opinion (we have run the benchmarks)
and I could be wrong ;-)

So we don't keep Xeon based machines here. Shortly, we will be building some
Xeon based machines and will be able to include those architectures in a our
downloads.

Sorry I can't be more help.

Seth Bardash

Integrated Solutions and Systems

719-495-5866

Failure can not cope with perseverance! 



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