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

Thu Mar 10 08:12:48 UTC 2011
Peter Peltonen <peter.peltonen at gmail.com>

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 7:40 PM, Tom H <tomh0665 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 11:51 AM,  <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
>> Peter Peltonen wrote:
>>> On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 6:33 PM,  <m.roth at 5-cent.us> wrote:
>>>> Peter Peltonen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>
>> Nope. They may have said they "pre-installed the RAID, but you really need
>> to go into the setup (<ctrl-c>, or -f, or whatever), and see what it
>> presents ->logically<- (key buzzword). If it hasn't been initialized, or
>> put into logical configuration, then it simply will not present the
>> logical drives to the o/s, and AFAIK, it will *not* present the physical
>> drives at all.
>
> I think that it's ctrl-r and that you have to set up "virtual disks"
> using the "physical disks".

Here are some pics of the RAID configuration:

http://www.knuka.org/raid1.jpg
http://www.knuka.org/raid2.jpg

For me it seems that the drives are initialized and virtual disks
setup, so it is not a hardware configuration issue?

I also received confirmation from the vendor that the controller is "LSI 1068E".

Should this controller be supported by CentOS5.5 without a driver disk?

Regards,
Peter

Regards,
Peter