How to determine which RHEL driver to use in fedora?

[marcp]

Hello,

I am a noob trying to manage an IBM 306x server with onboard adaptec sata raid. It has Fedora Core 5 on it, migrated from windows by my predecessor.

Yesterday I started getting emails from smartd saying that one of the drives has "offline uncorrectable sectors". So I went out and bought a new drive and popped it in. Now I can't figure out how to get the stupid array to rebuild with the new drive.

According to the reading I've done I have to rebuild it using the IBM RaidMan utility, which wasn't installed. After installing it it tells me that 'no controllers were found in this system'. AAGHH!

Next I learned about Kudzu and discovered that it is using the ata_piix driver and that the controller is appearing as a Intel 6300ESB Sata Raid Controller, which presumably isn't supported by RaidMan.

The correct driver is called aarich and there are many variations from ibm (see ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/systems/support/system_x/41y7827.txt) that support many flavors of RHEL. Surely one of them is appropriate, but how do I tell which one?

Actually the (possibly) simpler question is how can I cause the array to rebuild itself without the raidman utility?

Thanks for any help or comments...


Marc Pelletier
Goldak Airborne Surveys

[A.Serbinski]

Seems that your predecessor didn't know what he was doing. Fedora is NOT suitable for a server.

Adaptec raid arrays can be rebuilt using the bios raid utility. No additional software is required unless it is mandatory for it to be rebuilt online. Is it possible for you to shut the system down?

Are you sure that you're using the adaptec raid controller? If you're using linux software raid, you can use mdadm to rebuild the array.

Support disks for that system available here: https://www-304.ibm.com/systems/support/supportsite.wss/docdisplay?lndocid=MIGR-55041&brandind=5000008


Good luck.

[marcp]

>Adaptec raid arrays can be rebuilt using the bios raid utility.
>No additional software is required unless it is mandatory for
>it to be rebuilt online. Is it possible for you to shut the system down?

Yes, I have launched into the bios utility but I still can't figure it out, which is why I was trying to get the RaidMan working. I have since run RaidMan off of a bootable cd but failed to get my new drive online there either...

Within the bios utility (labelled Adaptec Embedded Sata HostRAID controller Array Configuration Utility), there are four options. They are 1)Manage Arrays 2)Create Array 3)Add/Delete Hotspare 4)Initialize drives.

Options 2 & 4 are obviously not what I need, as either of them will wipe out my existing array.

Option 3 doesn't seem to matter, as I have added my new drive as a hotspare and it doesn't rebuild automatically, depite what the docs say.

Option 1, Manage Arrays, sounds like it should be the ticket. It has 5 suboptions; delete, display properties, verify, rebuild, mark/unmark bootable. Display properties shows that there is one drive missing in the array, delete is not what I want, verify does a scan & isn't what I want, rebuild fails because it only sees one drive in the array!

I must be missing something really basic, but I've had 2 other people go over it as well and none of us can figure out how to add the new drive to the array. Note that the drive is visible, its just not part of the array. Its been labelled as a hotspare and removed and rebooted many times.

The RaidMan (or more properly ServeRAID manager) utility is about the same in a slightly graphic package.

I know, none of this has to do with fedora. I've changed direction midstream. Surprisingly I can find hundreds of references on the web to how to CREATE a raid array with this utility, there is nothing relating to actually recovering from a disk failure!

cheers

Marc Pelletier

[A.Serbinski]

I don't think that you want the drive to be a hotspare. Hotspare is an EXTRA drive that comes online for automatic rebuild AT THE TIME when another drive in the array fails.

I don't remember the last time I had to use the adaptec bios utility, but I can tell you this... you have a server purchased from a reputable company, the only reason to pay the premium for a brand name system is the SUPPORT that they provide. You might want to give them a call.