Add kmod RAID driver in Centos 7 installer for HP Proliant

Issues related to hardware problems
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fakemoth
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Add kmod RAID driver in Centos 7 installer for HP Proliant

Post by fakemoth » 2015/02/26 07:42:03

Hey. For the life of me I can't find a way to make use of the ELREPO kmod-cciss during installation of CentOS 7. I know, RHEL removed support for some older RAID controllers (nice Linux filosophy "throw your servers to the garbage even if they work fine if you want the new OS... 'cause those come cheap for you, and producers like IBM, HP and Dell are so so poor...". I am sure that letting in place some drivers for older hardware would have been a huuuge mistake from their part :shock: . Nevermind my anger...

To the point - I did manage to install CentOS 7 see here viewtopic.php?f=49&t=47011&start=10 on Proliant DL385, and installed the elrepo rpm; it just doesn't cut it, not without heavy modifications (please, once again, read the mentioned thread).

Problem is I never had to install a driver when installing Centos, did it a few times on other distros; tried using dd but it doesn't see the driver on the USB memory stick (the mem stick is detected, and I can see it in the options). If that info is residing somewhere on Google, I missed it horribly for weeks.

So my question is: can someone tell me step by step how to make CentOS 7 use this http://elrepo.reloumirrors.net/elrepo/e ... x86_64.rpm on a USB memory stick and just detect the damn controller, and offer my disks for partitioning? Just throwing it there, naming the USB drive OEMDRV, or extracting it there doesn't work. More to the point: all this section https://access.redhat.com/documentation ... s-x86.html is telling me I have to burn the IMAGE driver disk. Obviously there isn't one, I only have the elrepo .rpm. How can I "burn the .rpm" to put it moronically or find a workaround to use it :D ? What is the installer expecting to find on an external USB drive when looking for RAID controller drivers?

This will be of great help.
Last edited by fakemoth on 2015/03/02 08:05:12, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: How to add kmod RAID driver at install time for Proliant

Post by TrevorH » 2015/02/26 08:52:23

To do what you want would need the rpm turning into a driver disk so that you can pass 'dd' to the installer. I am unsure if anyone knows how to do that any more!

I suspect that the reasoning behind dropping the support is not 'throw your servers away' but that CentOS 6 supports them and doesn't go out of support until 2020 by which time there are not many people who will still be using a server bought in 2007.
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Re: How to add kmod RAID driver at install time for Proliant

Post by fakemoth » 2015/02/26 08:59:04

TrevorH wrote:I suspect that the reasoning behind dropping the support is not 'throw your servers away' but that CentOS 6 supports them and doesn't go out of support until 2020 by which time there are not many people who will still be using a server bought in 2007.
I know/read the reasoning, still it sucks not to be able to upgrade now - it's stupid really, I mean how much space-taken-in-ISO/testing would be involved in this...? And it doesn't help anyone, but for sure it's leaving baffled thousands of admins of tens of thousands of those very (not only HP) popular servers still there today. Not speaking for others, but when I am installing I want to be with the latest version - else I am saying to myself: "why did I bother getting those servers when their producer is not working with the most popular distros to support them in the future, and why I am opting for a distro that makes this kind of erratic moves? I mean the two are really dealing with server hardware and software? Because to me it looks like Windowish stuff not supporting some stupid Audigy card or something". Rest assured I will never get anything else HP due to their nice history, and for charging money since 2014 for firmware and drivers, OMFG :o

This isn't a issue, I was just venting steam :) as mentioned.

So any thoughts on the matter? Because it's not important who is responsible for what, but how does one solve the problem.
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Re: How to add kmod RAID driver at install time for Proliant

Post by AlanBartlett » 2015/02/26 15:17:45

My initial thought is that toracat may know a viable method of creating a "driver disk" for EL7 . . . I'll go and check. :?
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Re: How to add kmod RAID driver at install time for Proliant

Post by fakemoth » 2015/02/26 15:27:07

Thanks! Hope I can pull this out!
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Re: How to add kmod RAID driver at install time for Proliant

Post by toracat » 2015/02/26 16:40:13

Our retired forum moderator pschaff put together the driver disk stuff in this file. It is for EL6 and was proven to work as seen in this ELRepo bug tracker. This has not been tested for EL7. You can try creating one for yourself or file a request at http://elrepo.org/bugs .
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Re: How to add kmod RAID driver at install time for Proliant

Post by fakemoth » 2015/02/27 10:38:47

Thanks!
But it's not working in Centos 7; I did my best to adapt, followed the readme, and tried to "make" in a Centos VM (excluded <<I hope?>> the other drivers as they were throwing lots of errors through the subdirs file). This is where I am now:

Code: Select all

[root@localhost 2]# make
cp: cannot stat ‘./aacraid/rpm/SOURCES/aacraid-linux-src-1.1.7-28000.tgz’: No such file or directory

Building modules for kernel 3.10.0-123.20.1.el7.x86_64...

Building cciss module...

make[1]: Entering directory `/home/fakemoth/Downloads/2/cciss'
make[1]: Makefile.build: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `Makefile.build'.  Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/fakemoth/Downloads/2/cciss'
make: *** [kmods] Error 2
[root@localhost 2]# 
Obviously no image is created...
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Re: How to add kmod RAID driver at install time for Proliant

Post by toracat » 2015/02/28 01:55:44

Let's move to this ELRepo's bug #554. There is a test file built for you.
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Re: How to add kmod RAID driver at install time for Proliant

Post by TrevorH » 2015/02/28 13:57:34

Please report the final results back here though!
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
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Re: How to add kmod RAID driver at install time for Proliant

Post by fakemoth » 2015/02/28 15:38:40

Thank you very much @Toracat! It is working OK so far - managed to install a system, now I am installing CentOS 7 on the second one. Was weird though because the drive (from the RAID1 HP array) appeared under "Specialized and Network Disks > Add a disk" which was something I didn't encountered before. Was at first desolated when I saw only my 16GB USB mem. stick :lol: scared me to death :o

But it did install OK and now as I said I am doing it on a second machine! Will post here if something goes berserk, but I doubt it. So people - you are doing it wrong: it was enough to ask politely the wonderful people at ELREPO http://elrepo.org/ (using Tiki, nice!) and they solved it like in 2 hours! Wasted weeks on this one, rolled back to 6.6, tried again with 7, rolled back again and tried to cope with it, until it hit me: "wait, this is Linux, someone could help if there is a driver".

I am copying that miracle .iso file on all my storages, servers, notebooks and PCs. Maybe on the phones too. Just in case :ugeek:

Now I figure it will be enough to add the elrepo repo to get any future updates, right? One more thing - do you foresee any issues when one will upgrade to CentOS 7.1 which I think will hit us sooner than we think?
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