SUMMARY: Emulex Fibre Channel HBA

I got 2 replies. One from Jason Feilbach and one from Bertrand Hutin
with excellent tips and ideas. After quite a bit of effort I got to the
point where I have usuable SAN disks mounted on the linux host. I could
have probably saved myself some pain by going to HP early on but HP
sonly supports the QLogic qla2340/qla2342 HBA and the HBA available to
me for testing was an Emulex LP950.

Here is a composition of notes I put together during the process. They
include info provided by Jason and Bertrand as well as additional bits
of info from the testing.


Notes from attaching linux RHAS to an HP/Compaq SAN with an Emules LP950
HBA.

1. Get the open build driver and utility from Emulex.

2. Compile the driver:
        a. Extract the driver & util tar file into a working directory.
        b. Edit lpfc.conf.c as follows:
                lpfc_network_on=0 (disables IP networking on the HBA)
                lpfc_scandown=0   (Used for arbitrated loops)
                lpfc_lun0_missing=0 (Scan past lun 0 id it is missing)
                lpfc_automap=2 (Automatically bind using WWPN)
        c. I used automap because I couldn't seem to get persistent
binding to work.
        d. make build
        e. make install

At this point lpfcdd.o should be in the kernel modules directory.

3. Update modules.conf
        alias scsi_hostadapter lpfcdd

4. Rebuild initrd
        /sbin/mkinitrd /boot/initrd-2.4.9-e.27enterprise-lpfc.img
2.4.9-e.27enterprise

5. Update grub.conf or lilo.conf. The boot loader needs to know about
the new initrd file and needs to tell the kernel that support for
multiple luns is required.

>From updated grub.conf

title Red Hat Linux (2.4.9-e.27enterprise-lpfc)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-e.27enterprise ro root=/dev/cciss/c0d0p3
max_scsi_luns=128
        initrd /initrd-2.4.9-e.27enterprise-lpfc.img

6. Some utilities seem to be required from the EVA platform kit for
linux so install the platform kit next.

7. Reboot.


Next create vdisks on the EVA and present them to the linux host. This
assumes that the host was physically attached to the Fibre Channel
switch and that a host entry for the linux host was already created in
the EVA. The platform kit I got from HP states that the OS specified
during the host entry creation should be "Sun Solaris".

On the linux box verify that the lpfcdd module loaded "lsmod". The
lpfcdd module requires the sd_mod and the scsi_mod.

The probe-luns command will scan for new luns. Run "probe-luns -a" and
then "probe-luns -l". The output will show the EVA controller and each
presented lun. The luns will be associated with sg and sd devices. This
will be reflected in the messages file.

At this point I could sfdisk the new sd devices and then use mkfs to
create filesystems.

Problems:

1. I had to create a startup file to scan for luns and mount
filesystems, otherwise when the system booted no luns were available.

2. Half of the vdisks I create on the EVA do not appear to be usable on
the linux box. They are detected by probe-luns but the OS can not read
or modify their partition tables. I presented some of the problem luns
to a Sun box and they worked fine. Half of the luns presented to the
linux box worked fine.

3. Sometimes when I add a new lun I simply have to re-run probe-luns
which isn't disruptive to users on the system. Other times I have to
reload the lpfcdd module which requires that I un-mount all the SAN
filesystems. At least I don't have to reboot.

Thanks,
Vic Engle



On Mon, 2003-10-20 at 12:09, Vic Engle wrote:
> Hello List,
> 
> I have a Compaq Proliant DL580 with RHAS installed and wanted to add an
> emulex LP950 fibre channel adapter. I installed the card and booted the
> server. No new hardware was detected but when I run lspci the emulex
> card is listed. 
> 
> I downloaded driver s/w from the emulex site. They had an "Open Build"
> driver with their own license and an "Open Source" driver with a gnu
> license. I had to use the Open Build driver because my card wasn't
> supported with the Open Source driver. I built the driver and was able
> to manually load it "insmod lpfcdd" and the card logged into the fabric
> ok.
> 
> I added this line to /etc/modules.conf so that the driver would load at
> boot. 
> 
> alias scsi_hostadapter lpfcdd
> 
> Then I rebooted but the driver was not loaded and I couldn't find any
> log messages indicating why.
> 
> I suspect I need to manually create device files for the driver but I'm
> not sure that not having correct device files would prevent the driver
> from loading at boot since I can manually load it. The driver does taint
> the kernel because it isn't open source.
> 
> Can anyone give me any pointers as to how to proceed?
> 
> Thanks, and I will summarize.
> 
> Vic Engle
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