CentOS - Mar 2011 - CentOS 5.5 does not recognise SAS drives with LSI 1068E Controller

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.

I am a bit confused as others have reported CentOS 5.3 and 5.4 working
"out of the box" with the same controller:

 
http://www.linux-archive.org/centos/287219-installing-centos-5-4-64bit-server-lsi-sas-1068e-controller.html

So I assumed that the megaraid_sas driver shipped with CentOS should
support the controller?

What confuses me also is the output of lspci:

  MegaRAID SAS 3208 ELP

Does this mean its not the 1068E controller inside but something else?
Or CentOS misidentifies it?

So I assume the controller is not supported and I need a binary driver
for it. For 1068e it should be:

 
http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/standard_product_ics/sas_ics/lsisas1068e/index.html

and the driver I need is inside the file
mptlinux-4.26.00.00-1-rhel5.5.x86_64.dd.gz

But how do I go applying this driver during installation as the server
has no floppy drive?

And what happens if I get the driver installed and then the server's
kernel is updated? Do I need reinstall the driver somehow?

Best regards,
Peter

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.

          mark

On 03/09/11 16:55, 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*
> Best regards,
> Peter
That controller doesn't really support RAID, what you're getting is
commonly called FakeRAID. It basically helps the BIOS to boot from the RAID
arrays you create but leaves the actual RAID calculations etc... to the driver.

Configure the board in IT mode (Initiator/Target). That will disable the
FakeRAID. It's jumper JPA2 just above the SAS ports. Once you've done
that, clean the drives (dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sd? bs=1M) so no signatures from
the FakeRAID BIOS remain. After that install CentOS as you would normally and
use software RAID (which is better anyway).

By the way, the X7DVL-3 is a pretty old board, you say this is a new server? I
hope you didn't pay alot of money for it.


Glenn

Peter Peltonen wrote on Wed, 9 Mar 2011 17:55:04 +0200:
> 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".
Well, did you check at the LSI site for the controller/card that *is* 
detected (MegaRAID 3028)?
Maybe it's not a 1068E. There is no mention of it anywhere just on that 
product page. Maybe that info is wrong. Also, you should be aware that the 
1068E sits usually on a PCI-Express card. If that is not present or if you 
use the SATA ports on the MB that is *not* the 1068E!

Kai

I have now partially solved my problem:

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 5:55 PM, Peter Peltonen <peter.peltonen at
gmail.com> wrote:
> I need to do a new CentOS net install on a new server having the
> Supermicro X7DVL-3 motherboard:
[...]
> So I assume the controller is not supported and I need a binary driver
> for it. For 1068e it should be:
I received the driver image megasr-13.17.0421.2010-1-rhel50-u5-all.img
from the hardware vendor and was able to use it as the driver disk for
installation.

Upgrading the kernel issue is still unresolved though:
> And what happens if I get the driver installed and then the server's
> kernel is updated? Do I need reinstall the driver somehow?
After updates the system is unable to boot with the new kernel as it
cannot find the megasr driver.

What shoudl I do? Does the megasr module for the old kernel also work
with the new kernel => do I need to copy it somewhere and create an
initrd  image including that module? Or do I need to find an updated
megasr module from somewhere?

Best regards,
Peter