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RE: [TCLUG:6261] Compaq Proliant 1000 and linux



Eric,
 
Ok, first thing is to break down this big messy problem into a lot of little controllable problems.  I count four SCSI controllers in your system including the RAID card.  Why on earth do you need four?  Yank or disable all but one; let's get 'em working one at a time.  Also, have you explored the Compaq EISA config utility?  That can show you the exact model of each of your EISA cards along with the resources they are using.  You should have a EISA config boot disk that came with the server; if not, you can always download it from Compaq's web site.
 
I know for a fact that Red Hat 5.2+ supports the DPT PM2122 EISA controller, because I'm using one at work in an ancient Compaq SystemPro.  When I installed RH5.2 I selected the EATA driver (don't remember if it was PIO or DMA, sorry, but if one doesn't work the other will).  It took a minute or so to detect, but was fine from then on.  Never played with IDE translation mode.
 
We have a Compaq Smart-2/E SCSI array controller in our Compaq Proliant 4500 box (running SCO Unix).  A good link for info on using it with Linux is http://www.insync.net/~frantzc/cpqarray.html .  Haven't tried that driver myself, but it looks like it works.  The version at the web site is probably newer than the one included with RH6.0, judging by the release dates.
 
For the sake of keeping your sanity, please consider using the following configuration: 1 SCSI controller handling all SCSI devices except hard drives, and 1 RAID controller for the hard drives.  I don't know a blessed thing about the NCR 5710, so were it me I'd go with the Adaptec or the DPT.  If you can't get your box to boot off RAID, a second option would be to load Linux on your 2 gig drive attached to a SCSI controller, then after boot, load the RAID driver as a module and mount the RAID drive.
 
Hope that's enough to get you going.  Let us know how it goes.  Don't forget to check the terminators! :)
 
--
Carl Patten 
Systems Administrator
Trimodal Inc.
 
 -----Original Message-----
From: Eric Gjerde [mailto:gjerde@mn.mediaone.net]
Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 1999 1:06 AM
To: tclug-list@listserv.real-time.com
Subject: [TCLUG:6261] Compaq Proliant 1000 and linux

Ok- I acquired a compaq proliant 1000 server. quick rundown- it has 7? EISA slots, I popped in a pentium overdrive chip, has 128MB of parity ram. it has an onboard fast scsi-2 controller (NCR 5710 i believe? not a 5380, sadly) and I have the compaq smart-2/E scsi array controller (EISA), along with an adaptec dual-channel 2740 EISA, and a DPT PM2122 EISA (dpt smartcache III EISA scsi controller). also has a compaq netelligent 10base-t EISA ethernet card (which is theoretically supported by the tlan.o module)
 
Now here's my problem... Redhat 6.0 detects the 2740, which currently only holds an external dat drive.  according to all the info i can find, rh6 is supposed to have support for the smart-2/E and the smart-2/P (pci) raid controllers. this is correlated by the option in the boot disk for the PCI raid controller, but it does not detect the EISA controller that I have (proliant 1000 does not have PCI.) this is quite frustrating because I have 14 gigs of raid 5 array on it, which I would love to utilize, and the onboard controller (which is the best boot controller) has a 2 gig drive and an 8x cdrom. it doesn't see the onboard controller, oddly, even if I format the drive as msdos and boot the install kernel image and initrd with loadlin (I was hoping the bios would kick in and perhaps somehow let it see it. grasping at straws, I know.)
 
Now here's another angle- the DPT PM2122 smartcache III has some sort of IDE translation mode, which I could possibly use; but perusing the DPT web site shows that they have linux support for smartcache IV and smartraid IV. so I'm surprised it doesn't see it, seeing as that they seem to support linux to a certain extent, to where the code could be there.
 
Ack. what a mess. the worst part, I am currently using NT4 because nothing else will install or install AND use the hardware I have in there... I tried linux, freebsd, openbsd, netware 4.11 (which is evil!) and I would love to blow this bloated OS off what would otherwise be a great server box.
 
Anyone who has any suggestions or help will be greatly appreciated. If you can find some sort of working solution, I'll donate a 1gig scsi drive. nothing special, but this is driving me so crazy that I'll resort to bribing.
 
Thanks.
 
-Eric