[clue-tech] RH 7.3 on PowerEdge 6450

[Chris Tubutis]

On 24 Apr, Jack Parker wrote:
> Primary issue is that RH 7.3 does not see the internal scsi drives. 

This doesn't surprise me. Had a co-worker at a former employer right
around Y2K (+/- a few years) who ran RH on some mongo Dell boxes we had
there, he told me how he had to use some proprietary drivers from Dell
in order for his SCSI arrays to work with RH. Just out of curiosity, you
say it's not seeing the drives, but is it seeing the controller?

> Run Dell OpenManage Server Assistant to install - or - run vanilla RH
> install and load SCSI drivers.  OpenManage is probably a more
> integrated approach, have to borrow the cd monday - you can, of
> course, not download it, although Dell will sell you a copy.

I would see what resources Dell offers, hopefully they'll give you that
stuff for free (or, it sounds like you're borrowing a CD, maybe that'll
work just as well).

> I am leery of doing the adaptec flash - it warns that flashing the
> controller without a service tag in the setup is a bad thing, and of
> course I don't have a service tag in the setup.

I have no idea what a "service tag in the setup" is. Regardless, in
general, keeping your firmware up to date is generally a good thing. I'm
pretty sure you can DL firmware updates from Adaptec if you somehow hose
things up using Dell's stuff. Firmware updates generally scare me, too,
cuz before I make changes, I want a way to UNdo them in case something
freaks out and gets broken and that's typically hard to do with firmware
updates.

Perhaps there are also firmware updates to the hard drives themselves.

> - do I need to upgrade the PERC firmware?  Dire warnings from that
> have put me off jumping on it.

No idea what that is. I would make changes one at a time, then ascertain
the results. Sounds to me like you need the Dell-required drivers, I'm
not sure any of these firmware updates are gonna solve your problems but
they prolly can't hurt.

> - do I need to flash the adaptec firmware?  If so how do I get the
> service tag into the setup.  Perhaps that config tool I downloaded
> from Dell - have to try that.

No idea, maybe you can look at the currently-installed revision and then
find its date, then see what bugs this new firmware update addresses and
see if they apply to you.

> As I was putting it together, I carefully jumpered each SCSI drive to
> its own address, only to discover that you aren't supposed to, the
> scsi backplane does that for you in the poweredge.

Generally, yes, decent SCSI arrays will manage & take care of a lot of
things for you. Sounds to me like the drives use the SCA interface?
Kinda shaped like a long & skinny RS232 serial connector. A long &
skinny "D". Those drives get their SCSI IDs set by the device they're
plugged into. Many of Sun's SCSI drives come with mounting brackets
already attached, those brackets physically keep you from getting at the
jumpers. I have no idea what Dell has come up with.

> Still no joy on vanilla RH install with drivers - have to look more
> closely into what drivers I actually need there, my stab in the dark
> was probably off the mark.

Oh, I dunno about being off the mark, it sounds to me like you're doing
basically what lots of people would do.

About the only thing I know is that Dell requires you to use some
proprietary stuff with RH (and prolly with any vendor's Linux) in order
for SCSI devices to work properly. Hopefully you won't need the
Enterprise-class RH....

ct