Re: IPcop 2.0 on Proliant servers/RAID controllers

Daniel,

I finally got time to get back to working on this (work keeps getting in the
way) and for the most part, got it working.  Still have some testing to do
but it installs and works.  I did encounter the following problems while
trying to get it to work:

- The cciss array driver was removed at revision 6499 so I to had to put it
back in.

- The cciss array driver doesn't always work when compiled as a loadable
module.  Sometimes the installer will find the logical drives and sometimes
it won't.  If I compile it into the kernel, it finds the logical drives
every time (at least every time I rebooted for testing).  After it's
installed, appears not to have any problems.

- If I use the ILO2 on the HP server and mount the ISO through that, the
install hangs.  I traced it to the eject program, specifically the
"close(fd)" command
after the CDROM is actually ejected.  I tried a DL360 G5 and DL380 G5
(different ILO firmware versions) and got the same result.  Going to try and
setup the DL380 G4 I got and see if ILO1 has the same problem.  If I
manually umount and eject the CDROM from a terminal screen, install gives an
error about not being able to eject it but continues without problems.

Rich




-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Fabian [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2012 7:18 PM
To: Daniel Challen; [email protected]
Subject: RE: [IPCop-devel] IPcop 2.0 on Proliant servers/RAID
controllers


Daniel,

I too would like to see IPCOP able to install on HP servers without a lot of
manual work.  To help this along, I have setup a Debian system to develop on
and begun to make the necessary changes to accomplish this.  Unfortunately,
because of the way the CCISS driver displays the arrays to Linux (as you
pointed out in your message), it will require a number of changes to
different parts of the installer to work and not break the current devices
it installs to.  Currently, I got it to display the Logical Volumes in the
drive selection screen.  Once I get the selection screen working, will move
on to partitioning.  I will keep you informed of my progress.  Hopefully, if
I can get it to work correctly and continue to work for current devices, the
changes can be added to the main distribution.

Will be testing on a DL380 G4, DL380 G5, and DL360 G5 (the three systems I
have available) but expect it would work for any array controller supported
by the CCISS driver.

Rich Fabian


-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Challen [mailto:daniel.challen-0yODxA/[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, March 09, 2012 6:42 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [IPCop-devel] IPcop 2.0 on Proliant servers/RAID controllers


Begging your pardon if this is better on the user mailing list...

I've been running IPcop 1.4 on an HP Proliant (PC server) for a while,
where it works well (thank you). Upon trying to install 2.0 on the
machine, I (and others
http://www.ipcops.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=16918 ) have found
that it does not support the hardware RAID controller in these machines.

In more detail, the problem appears to be that the installer does not
handle 'unusual' disk device names. My machine (Proliant DL380 G3)
contains an integrated "SmartArray 5i", this is handled by the "cciss"
driver, which is definitely included in the IPcop 2.0 kernel, however
that driver presents the configured RAID disks as block devices (rather
than SCSI disks) with names in /dev like
/dev/cciss/c0d0     first controller, first disk
/dev/cciss/c1d2p1   second controller, third disk, first partition (yes,
controller and disk are zero-indexed, partitions are indexed from 1)

This is handled fine by the 1.4 installer routine. The following is from
my current 1.4 machine:
root@milton:~ # ls -l /dev/harddisk*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2006-02-09 11:35 /dev/harddisk
-> /dev/cciss/c0d0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 2006-02-09 11:35 /dev/harddisk1
-> /dev/cciss/c0d0p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 2006-02-09 11:35 /dev/harddisk2
-> /dev/cciss/c0d0p2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 2006-02-09 11:35 /dev/harddisk3
-> /dev/cciss/c0d0p3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 2006-02-09 11:35 /dev/harddisk4
-> /dev/cciss/c0d0p4

I have tried switching to a VC with a shell while the 2.0 installer is
running, and linking /dev/sda to /dev/cciss/c0d0 and /dev/sda1
to /dev/cciss/c0d0p1 etc, then back to the ncurses interface and
pressing the "Rescan" button, however that did not make it work.

I work for an HP reseller and have access to a number of Proliants, so I
can do some testing on various configurations if that helps.


Further detail on Linux on the "Proliant" range:
Older Compaq-badged proliants (e.g.
http://marc.info/?l=ipcop-devel&m=127844232704113&w=2) usually have the
cpqarray module, and devices like /dev/ida/c0d0 (I don't think we have
any of these for testing - they're bit too old)
More recent (generation 3 to 5 or 6) HP-badged proliants have
"SmartArray" hardware, driven by the cciss module, and device nodes
like /dev/cciss/c0d0     http://cciss.sourceforge.net/
The latest generation of SmartArray hardware is handled by a the 'hpsa'
module, which presents the disks as standard SCSI disks, so that they
have /dev/sda entries, and should not need any special case handling.

- Daniel Challen

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