[CentOS] Speaking of 3Ware/RAID/SATA/9550SX...

Seth Bardash seth at integratedsolutions.org
Wed Jul 12 20:31:18 UTC 2006


> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org 
> [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of Joshua Baker-LePain
> Sent: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 2:08 PM
> To: CentOS mailing list
> Subject: RE: [CentOS] Speaking of 3Ware/RAID/SATA/9550SX...
> 
> On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 at 11:00am, Mark Schoonover wrote
> 
> > Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:
> >>
> >> How is your array setup?  You can *not* boot from a device 
> >4TiB.  On
> >> such a device, you must use a gpt disklabel and neither 
> grub nor LILO
> >> support such.
> >
> > My array size is 4.5TB. It's just one large single RAID5, 
> so it's slightly
> > less than 4.5TB. So, what you're saying then is to either 
> put a small single
> > HD to install CentOS, or make the array smaller than 4.5TB. 


SNIP


Ladies and Gentlemen,

Using the 3ware 9550 or 9500 series controllers for any array larger
than 2 TB requires that you set up the controller to use
"Auto-Carving", set up and build the kernel to enable multiple LUNs,
rebuild initrd, reboot, and fdisk / mkfs the unused areas.

This forces the controller to "Auto-Carve" multiple 2 TB devices on
different LUNS of the same SCSI ID.
You also need to enable multiple LUN support in the kernel when you
build a new kernel - which is required.

So .... the install will go like this:

1) Enable Auto-carving in the 3ware BIOS.
	1A) Build 3ware boot driver floppy / CDROM for install

2) Install Centos with: 100 to 200 MB for /boot, 2 to 4 GB for swap,
50 to 100 GB for / - leave rest of array empty.
	Do rest of install as normal.

3) Install kernel source rpm and rebuild kernel from existing .config
file BUT turn on multiple LUN function in the SCSI functions of the
kernel.

	Rebuild kernel and initrd files and test.
	Reboot with new kernel.

4) fdisk and mkfs the rest of sda

5) fdisk and mkfs sdb (second LUN of first device - which you will now
be able to see)

6) If you want to span the devices use LVM or md or whatever.

We have done this and getting a system to this point took some time. 

Once we had the magic formula it went smoothly.

Hope this helps...........

Seth Bardash

Integrated Solutions and Systems
1510 Old North Gate Road
Colorado Springs, CO 80921

719-495-5866
719-495-5870 Fax
719-337-4779 Cell

http://www.integratedsolutions.org

Failure can not cope with knowledge and perseverance! 
 

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