[WBEL-users] aarich SATA/RAID driver ?

[kbohling@birddog.com]

Quoting Raymond Lillard <rlillard@sonic.net>:

> Kirby Bohling wrote:
> > On Tue, May 18, 2004 at 04:50:40PM -0700, Raymond Lillard wrote:
> > 
> >> Dear Whitebox-users,
> >> 
> >> I have been handed a brand new 1U high server and asked to load it
> >> up with some flavor of Open Source *nix.
> >> 
> >> The problem is that it has the motherboard requires the aarich.o
> >> driver.  I have successfully loaded RH9 with a dd floppy, but
> >> WBEL-U1 doesn't recognize it.
> > 
> > 
> > Okay, I'm not sure what to say.  Neither my RedHat 9, or my WBEL has
> 
> > a driver for aarich (searching in /lib/modules/* for aarich.o).
> Under
> > WhiteBox 3.0, I can't find the *aarich* as the name of any file in
> > the kernel source.
> > 
> > What did you do to create the disk image that you dd'ed to make it 
> > work under RH 9.0.  If you are literally using the same disk, you'll
> 
> > probably have problems with kernel symbols.  You probably won't be 
> > able to load the RH9.0 module into a WBEL3.0 kernel.
> 
> I downloaded the floppy image from the Adaptec ( or maybe Intel, it is
> an Intel motherboard ), and booted from the WBEL CDROM with the
> command
> line: linux dd

Check.

> 
> > Now if you followed the same process to construct both disk images 
> > (at some point, that should involve re-compiling a module), knowing 
> > what steps you followed would be handy.  Also, can you be a bit more
> 
> > specific about "WBEL-U1 doesn't recognize it"?  Something I could 
> > type into google and hits from the LKML lists?  You must be seeing 
> > some type of error.  If not, what's the last thing you did see, the 
> > BIOS, GRUB or what?
> 
> I worked through the WBEL install menus to a point where I was asked
> for my driver disk.  When the disk is actually read, no drivers are
> read.  The dialog boxes will identify all drivers that are recognized
> when this feature actually finds a module it can use.
> 
Understood.

> > What I have found on google about this, is that it seems aarich is a
> 
> > binary only driver (that is, the source isn't available from the 
> > vendor, I believe that is Adaptec in this case).  If that's the
> case,
> > you are probably just stuck.  You can probably only safely run the
> > kernels that it was designed to run under.  I thought that the 
> > RHEL/WBEL was enough different that modules had to be compiled 
> > special for them.  I wouldn't run it the EL kernels with a RH kernel
> 
> > module.  That's just me.
> 
> Well, I have since discovered the source to a driver from Adaptec.
> 
>
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/driverdetail.jsp?sess=no&language=German&cat=/Operating%20System/Linux&faq_id=10597
> 
> In looking through the Changelog, it appears to be recently
> maintained.  "aacraid.o" is one of its targets.
> 

Wait, is it aarich, or aacraid that you are looking for?  The aacraid is a
built in module on RedHat 9.0 (I'm really sure it is a part of the WBEL,
but I don't have access to one right this instant, I'm pretty sure I saw
it in /lib/modules/* when I went looking earlier today).  If it's built
into the RedHat kernels, you probably have an easy route.  The worst case
scenerio is that you have to build a Driver disk yourself to load.  I've
never done that, but I'll be surprised if there isn't some way to get one
pre-built from RedHat or WhiteBox that should work.

Here's some documentation on how to use a pre-built kit to build a driver
disk:

http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~kewley/driverdisk/dd.html

I've never done that, but the docs looks straight forward.

Next, you might try the driver disks that ship with WBEL.  The driver you
want is probably on this disk:

http://ftp.kspei.com/mirrors/whiteboxlinux.org/whitebox/3.0/en/os/i386/images/drvblock.img

Sorry, if I just suggested the obvious.  A SATA driver, might just not be
mainstream enough to fit onto the base install disk.  The documentation
actually says that if it isn't IDE all the way, you'll probably need this
disk (that's not true, I know a number of common SCSI devices are on the
base install disks, but SATA I'm guessing doesn't rate).

Thanks,
    Kirby