Re: XFS installer and driver/update disks

["Daniel J. Cody" <djc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Thor -

I had almost the exact same issue last year. I wrote up the expierence 
on my weblog, and maybe that will help you out:
http://members.evolt.org/djc/stdio/index.cfm/daddy/show/mommy/94

another trick I pulled was to install RH to an IDE disk, download the 
latest kernel/patches/driver, recompile, and then you'll be able to use 
the controller and XFS. I found the 2.4.14 kernel to work really nice 
with both the card and XFS, so nice, its been up since then.

Good luck, feel free to shoot me a line if you need someone to bounce 
ideas off :)

.djc.

Thor Lancelot Simon wrote:
> I have a new system with an Adaptec I2O RAID controller.  I'd
> really like to use XFS on this system, but I'm having a terrible
> time getting it installed.
>
> The RedHat 7.2 distribution doesn't ship with the Adaptec/DPT I2O
> driver.  Adaptec has a driver disk, but of course the kernel versions
> differ between standard RedHat 7.2 and SGI 7.2+XFS, so the driver
> doesn't match what anaconda looks for and doesn't work if loaded by
> hand (doesn't load, actually; missing symbols).  I tried downloading
> the Adaptec driver sources and the XFS-patched RedHat kernel sources
> but building a driver disk that actually works appears to be beyond
> my abilities; adaptec's driver sources are distributed as a patch
> against 2.4.6, so I have no idea how the 2.7-10 redhat kernel modules
> were built.  Later kernel versions have the dpti driver included in
> the Linus sources, but not what RedHat uses on their install disks.
>
> There's also an "updates" disk distributed with the RedHat 7.2 driver
> disk; it includes a new "packages.py" but with no real knowledge of
> Python I can't really see the difference, nor tell if it will work right
> with the SGI anaconda.
>
> What's the right thing to do here?  If anyone cares to look at the
> RedHat/Adaptec solution for stock RedHat 7.2, it's at 
> http://people.redhat.com/tcallawa/dpt/; driver source tarball is down
> at the bottom of the page.
>
> I tried a stock RedHat install but ext3 leaves much to be desired.  I
> really want XFS on this box, but how?
>
> Thor