Re: XFS installation on Compaq ML 350

["Michael G. Martin" <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I recently put xfs redhat 7.1 on compaq dl360s and a dl380.


The main changes I had to do were:

1) Use the compaq server setup disk and tell it I was using Linux for 
the OS.  If this was not done, my network cards did not work.

2) Install Linux with xfs cd for redhat 7.1.  The dl360s used their 
default raid controller (cpqarray driver).  The 380 uses a smart array 
5300 raid controller (cciss driver).

3) XFS enables devfs by default.  When enabled, the raid controllers 
were not found and mounted correctly by devfs.  I disabled devfs because 
I did not have the time to even start looking into it.  Use the 
devfs=nomount to disable it--you have to boot with it disabled before 
you can add it to your lilo.conf.  So when booting, hit ctrl-x and type 
in linux devfs=nomount at the lilo prompt.  Then edit you lilo.conf and 
add to the append="... devfs=nomount" (the xfs cdrom has this info in 
the readme or install file)

4) From there, it should mount your devices correctly.

I did have problems with the cciss driver when trying to load a postgres 
database--crashes of the database.  I found that the Alan Cox patches 
fixed problems with this driver in 2.4.5.  However, I could not easily 
apply the AC patches and the XFS patches without problems, so after 
trying multiple kernels and xfs versions, I removed xfs from the dl380 
and kept a straight 7.1 install.  At least my database built.  

I did just notice the Folk project which may have helped get all the 
patches into 1 kernel I needed.  But, I'll probably wait a bit before I 
go down that road again.  Seems like lots of changes are happening in 
the 2.4.x kernel and drivers right now (read something usually breaks).  



--Michael

werner maes wrote:

>         Hello,
>
> I tried to install RH 7.1 & XFS on a Compaq ML 350 server using the ISO image
> provided by SGI. The server has two SCSI-disks configured in RAID-1.
> The installation seemed to worked fine, but after the reboot several
> problems occured.
> Several files were not found (e.g. chgrp, locate, network information,...).
> It was not
> possible to install programs using rpm. 
>
> My question:
> Is this a known problem? Or are the drivers for the Compaq RAID card not
> included (Compaq
> RAID LC2 controller)?
>
> If you want, I can provide a more detailed description of the error messages.
>
> Werner Maes
> KULeuven