[CentOS] 4.4/64-bit Supermicro/ Nvidia Sata RAID Driver

Tue Dec 5 00:36:39 UTC 2006
Karl R. Balsmeier <karl at klxsystems.net>

Hi,

I am installing Centos ServerCD 4.4 64-bit on a new Supermicro board, 
the RAID BIOS looks fine, RAID 5, all 4 Seagate ES 250 GB drives show up 
as a single array in the RAID BIOS tool, and the OS install phase 
completes without a hitch.

One thing I noticed was that the OS was loading the sata_nv driver and 
picking up the 4 Sata drives instead of the large RAID5 volume, it 
should just appear as one big 1TB drive.  Usually it should see the RAID 
and not worry about loading the sata driver per se from what I remember...

When the OS install completes and I reboot, I simply get a blinking cursor.

On consulting Amax/ Supermicro, they write:

---snip----
Since this Supermicro model was just recently released, it is possible 
that the drivers on your installation disk are out of date. 
Supermicro suggested downloading the latest Redhat Driver from their FTP 
Site at:
 
ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SATA/nVidia/MCP55/Linux/Redhat
choose either:
 
  For 32-bit
 
File: nvsata-rhel4.4-0.11-1.21.i686.img 
<ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SATA/nVidia/MCP55/Linux/Redhat/nvsata-rhel4.4-0.11-1.21.i686.img> 
1440 KB 7:03:00 PM
 
or for 64-bit
 
 File: nvsata-rhel4.4-0.11-1.21.x86_64.img 
<ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SATA/nVidia/MCP55/Linux/Redhat/nvsata-rhel4.4-0.11-1.21.x86_64.img> 
1440 KB 7:04:00 PM

----snip----

My question is how, during the install, do I specify this driver?  Right 
now the OS simply reads out sata_nv as it progresses, but I see no 
interrupt point where it allows one to 're-specify' or otherwise 
encourage the OS to utilize this updated .img file supermicro is suggesting.

Any suggestions on the step-by-step sequence for this?

bonus/ p.s. -anyone had any experience with the Nvidia onboard RAID/ 
Supermicros?  Did you like it, (I'm an LSI-Logic fan myself), just 
looking for opinions...

-karlski