SAS Driver Installation on RHEL5

[Starrena]

Hello, I am trying to install RHEL5.3 on a SAS hard drive with an onboard LSI 1068E SAS controller. However, the BIOS and the RHEL5 installer does not recognize the SAS drives. Everything I've read online indicates that it is a driver issue and that I have to create a driver diskette and do a linux dd at the boot prompt to load the SAS drivers before proceeding with the install.

HOWEVER, I do not have a floppy drive or diskette and therefore burned the driver image onto a CD, attached an external CD-ROM drive to my system, did a linux dd at the boot prompt and the installer did ask me for the driver disk. BUT I am getting the error "Driver disk is invalid for this release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server". I have verified the drivers were for 5 Update 3. I even tried doing this with a 5.2 installer with a 5.2 driver and get the same error.

Is it possible to load a driver diskette via CD-ROM? I'm using the burn CD/DVD app on Red Hat to burn the image onto the CD...is that the right way?

I'm stumped! How can I get RHEL5.3 installer to recognize my SAS hard drives?

Thanks in advance!

[HROAdmin26]

However, the BIOS and the RHEL5 installer does not recognize the SAS drives.

Wha? If the BIOS doesn't see the SAS controller and/or the HDD's, you have a hardware problem that has nothing to do with an OS driver.

How can I get RHEL5.3 installer to recognize my SAS hard drives?

Once you resolve your HW issue, I suggest starting with the RHEL Install Guide.

[Starrena]

Wha? If the BIOS doesn't see the SAS controller and/or the HDD's, you have a hardware problem that has nothing to do with an OS driver.

While the BIOS does not see the SAD Hard Drive the LSI Controller program does. This is a common problem with these types of SAS drives.

Once you resolve your HW issue, I suggest starting with the RHEL Install Guide.

I don't have access to a floppy or usb drive (not allowed where I work) to create a driver diskette. Is there a way to burn the driver img to a CD and upload the driver that way following linux dd?