RHEL6 not finding my RocketRAID 2710 controller on bootup!

[Endiel]

Hello all,

So, we are upgrading a system in our server room to RHEL6.2. It uses a RocketRAID 2710 RAID 1 controller.

When I installed RHEL6 initially, it wouldn't see the RAID1 array and was reporting "no usable disk." So I had to use some black magic.

I installed RHEL6.2 on a virtual machine and downloaded the RocketRAID rr272x_1x custom drivers and compiled them, put them onto a USB stick, and then during the RHEL6.2 install got into a command prompt and loaded up the driver:

> cp rr272x_1x.ko /lib/modules/../scsi/rr272x_1x.ko
> depmod -a
> modprobe rr272x_1x.ko

And the installer was then able to see my disk array-- all good! Install proceeded normally, and I rebooted...

and now it can no longer find the boot disk, because I am assuming it doesn't know how to talk to my RAID BIOS. I'm pretty sure that I can't load a custom driver during the boot process in order to get it to see the RAID array, or can I?

I guess that would mean a custom kernel build... which I would really rather avoid.

Am I screwed here? Is my only option to wait until RocketRAID updates their BIOS to support RHEL6? It looks like they only have RHEL5.5 up to this point:

**it won't let me post the url, but google the following***
"BIOS_Driver rr2727x_1x"

I guess I'm in uncharted territory here. Any suggestions? Or should I just go with RHEL5.5 and wait for the update?

Thanks!

[Endiel]

Here is a screenshot of the boot with "quiet" taken out of the boot string. You can see where it fails. The fact that it's getting a kernel panic makes me think that GRUB is loading fine, but then it just can't find the boot sector-- which is why I think it's a raid problem.

[Rubberman]

You are using this RAID device as a boot/system drive? I never recommend that because of this sort of problem. I generally use a swapable system/boot drive that I can copy to a backup drive on a regular basis, and use RAID for data drives only. Doing that, I have had zero downtime in 4 years.

[Endiel]

You are using this RAID device as a boot/system drive? I never recommend that because of this sort of problem. I generally use a swapable system/boot drive that I can copy to a backup drive on a regular basis, and use RAID for data drives only. Doing that, I have had zero downtime in 4 years.

Yes-- that is how it was setup when it was shipped to us-- still trying to figure it out. I'm new to the company and this is the current setup that I have to work with-- though I think I tend to agree with you.

[Endiel]

Solved-- I'm just going to disable the RAID controller and use RHEL software RAID. Thanks.