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

Wed Mar 9 16:33:37 UTC 2011
m.roth at 5-cent.us <m.roth at 5-cent.us>

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>
I recently had a problem like that with a Dell box. The trick is that with
a hardware controller, it supercedes software RAID. What you need to do is
go into the firmware controller configuration on boot, before you get to
grub, and make sure everything's visible and correct. The controller can
see the drives, but not present them to the o/s if you don't.

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