IBM x3650

[malayhax]

Hey everyone, after beating my head against a wall for the better part of today I'm going to turn to you guys to see if I can't get a lead on my issue.

So, like the topic says, I've got a IBM x3650. Very slick box, but a not so slick RAID controller. I've got a IBM ServeRAID 8k SAS controller in there with three disks contained in a RAID 5 array and another disk for the OS. Now, when I boot off a Woody cd it obviously doesn't detect the RAID controller leaving me with no media that I can partition.

I've been looking all over google for a solution and I see a lot of people in a similar situation as I am, but so far I've not had any luck with the solutions I've tried. The most promising lead seems to be from here: http://mail.kwenie.org/debian/linux-2.4.24.html as it contains the aacraid drivers that I need, however when I boot from this I can add in options at boot time, but from there it does not detect the USB keyboard that I'm using with the system. I'd gladly use PS/2, however the machine does not have any PS/2 ports that I can interface with. Looking at the boot time options, it seems that for a USB keyboard I can issue a "linux keystroke" from the "boot:" line, however this does not get the USB sub-system to respond and allow me to use the USB keyboard, so I can't make any progress.

So, here's where I'm at: I've got a slick expensive box sitting on my desk that I can't make any progress with. So, here I am to see if anyone else has found a work around for this.

[BillMac]

I would pre configure the raid array, then boot. Thats how I installed my 3850 with the Servraid8i on some sas drives the other day. There is a std scsi boottime array configurator or you can boot on the servraid managemenet cdrom that was sent with it. I would suggest the later as you will then have full raid setup control. Then lay down an array and install OS. Redhad AS4 had the aacraid driver , dont know if your OS release will. You will have to have an install script that has it . Bummer your woody disk install does not support usb keyboards.

[malayhax]

I would pre configure the raid array, then boot. Thats how I installed my 3850 with the Servraid8i on some sas drives the other day. There is a std scsi boottime array configurator or you can boot on the servraid managemenet cdrom that was sent with it. I would suggest the later as you will then have full raid setup control. Then lay down an array and install OS. Redhad AS4 had the aacraid driver , dont know if your OS release will. You will have to have an install script that has it . Bummer your woody disk install does not support usb keyboards.

Well, actually what I ended up doing to address the issue was use Debian Etch. It seems that my issue was dealing more with Sarge not containing the correct aacraid drivers that I needed for the machine. Etch fixed the issue, and though it broke our standards (we always use Sarge, and will until Etch becomes stable) it was a decent work around and it got the machines up and going. I did create two arrays before getting around to the OS install, so it really just came down to drivers in the end.

[siliconheart]

I have IBM x-3850/3650 boxes with SAS 8i RAID controller, Im installing RHEL AS 3 update 8 (last update) the driver is available on IBM site. But, the RAID ctrlr is not being picked up for installation ?

I tried other updates like 5 it picked up fine, but was considerably unstable and crashed on me.
My application is tuned for RHEL AS 3 U8. So, n e wise ideas appreciated!!

[malayhax]

Well, if you're using RHEL, do you have some kind of support contract? I used Debian Etch, and while I didn't want to use that (we use Debian Sarge here) it did work for my hardware and it was an acceptable alternative. If you have a support contract with Red Hat I'd suggest getting them on the phone and determine what can be done. While I was working on this issue I did download Fedora Core 6 and booted that, and it did find the controller. After Fedora found it, I determined that Debian Etch would support it and switched to that.