Installation of IBM M1015 (LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i) card

[doogie]

I've searched around and I keep coming close but I've not managed to find a solution.

I have an Amahi server under Fedora 12 (not made the upgrade yet to 14, not sure if there's a straightforward upgrade process yet?)

I've run out of my 6 onboard SATA drives, so purchased an IBM M1015 card, which is the same as an LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i to add another 8 ports. (I currently have around 10TB of data on the server)

My kernel version is 2.6.32.26-175.fc12.x86_64 but the drivers available from LSI are for 2.6.31.5-127.fc12_x86_64. (the Fedora 14 version of the driver is for 2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64 - is that what Amahi would have if I installed it just now?)

The card detects in the BIOS but it fails during the driver installation as the kernel version doesn't match.

I know I can get grub to boot to this previous version of the kernel, but my understanding is that I'd be applying the drivers to that version, and when switching back to the 2.6.32 it would still not have the driver.

This is the first major driver problem I've had with a linux system, so I'm at a bit of a loss where to look!

[ghstryder]

This is the first major driver problem I've had with a linux system, so I'm at a bit of a loss where to look!

Doogie; I can't do it right this second, but if I don't see an answer here first, I will pass along what I did to build the RocketRaid 2322 driver against a new kernel. I would have to believe the steps should be very similar.

[doogie]

Hi ghstryder, that would be great thanks!

[moredruid]

during the boot screens you should see a timer (booting fedora... in X seconds)

if you press a key you get to a menu where you can choose a different kernel.

if you want a different kernel to be booted as default you should edit /boot/grub/menu.lst
change default=0 to default=<the title of the kernel you want to boot>

grub starts to count at 0 then 1,2,3 etc so to boot the 3rd kernel you would change the parameter to default=2

[ghstryder]

My kernel version is 2.6.32.26-175.fc12.x86_64 but the drivers available from LSI are for 2.6.31.5-127.fc12_x86_64. (the Fedora 14 version of the driver is for 2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64 - is that what Amahi would have if I installed it just now?)

Hmmmm, no developers popped up who just happen to run that card - looks like you are stuck with me. On the plus side, I pulled the commands right from my bash history, so I could double-check my notes. More on that later.

This is my current kernel: 2.6.35.13-92.fc14.i686.PAE. If you update to F14, you will not have the correct driver for your kernel, as you can see. In a perfect world, you could just install the driver and be done, but at some point you will have to deal with this regardless, they won't update drivers forever.

Ok, as I said, I have a RocketRaid card, an older but really nice card despite not being an Areca. When I go to the Highpoint web site, I see drivers for Fedora, Windows, Debian, etc. They list specific kernels next to each driver. Needless to say, none of them match the current Linux kernel. Still looking at the list, at the very bottom I find one described as "Open Source Driver" "Support Linux Kernel v2.4.x and v2.6.x ( x86 and x86_64 )" This is the generic open source driver. Assuming you find one, you just need to build it against your kernel. Finding the correct driver may be the most difficult part of this process. I am sure that LSI has forums if need be.

With the driver in hand, I extracted it and read the instructions. They showed a list of programs needed to build the driver. The only ones I needed were kernel-devel and gcc, so I installed them. One thing to be aware of; as you will see below, I have the PAE kernel. You show the standard kernel, so you shouldn't need to worry about it, but there is a separate PAE kernel-devel. I also made certain I was using the latest kernel, no sense doing this twice.

Now, there was a bewilderingly long list of steps to do this. As I went through it, it turned out that most were not necessary. The steps below are what I have to do to build the driver. Remember, this has to be done if you update the kernel too, so take notes as you go.

I extracted the driver to a folder in my /user/home/ folder. As you will see, there are a few sub-folders inside the rr232x folder. As root, navigate to the folder with the driver - you don't have to, but it eliminates having to type the fully qualified path.
Here are all of the relevant steps, clipped directly from my bash.history file.

Code: Select all

yum install kernel-PAE.i686 yum install gcc yum install kernel-PAE-devel cd /home/lb/rr232x/product/rr232x/linux/ make install modprobe rr232x

Reboot

It was just that simple on my system. Hopefully, once you track down and distill everything, your install will be similar. There is a web based management utility I installed, etc, buy you can investigate that once you are up and running. I will happily entertain questions, but be aware I am by no means skilled or knowledgeable, just stubborn.

[doogie]

Thanks moredruid although that will force me to stick with that kernel version won't it, which will potentially cause other problems.

Thanks for the details ghstryder - I thought I could get away with it by upgrading to F14 but obviously not, so at least that saves some time from doing that path just to try the drivers.

I think I found the source version of the drivers for my card already, but will have a poke around at the weekend when I can connect up a monitor to see the boot process etc incase something goes wrong - I thought this was going to be a plug and play install, but obviously it's not quite that simple!

I'll let you know how I get on.