Installing RHEL4 on HP DL140 G3 with the embedded RAID enabled

While DL140 G3 is quite a new piece of hardware, RHEL4, even with the later updates, is rather old.

When you decide to install RHEL4 on a DL140 G3 server, my first recommendation is this: if you decide to use the embedded SATA-II RAID controller – don’t. This is a driver-based RAID, much like the past win-modem devices. Some major parts of its operations are based on calculations done through the driver, directly on the host CPU. It has no advantages comparing to software RAID, and its major disadvantage is its immobile state – unlike software based mirror, this array cannot “migrate” to another server, unless this server is of the same type of hardware. Not sure about it, but it might also require close enough version of firmware as well.

It happened that your boss believes in win-RAID devices (despite the note above), or for some other reason you decide to use this win-RAID, here are the steps to install the system.

1. Download the latest driver disk image for RHEL4 from HP site.

2. If you have the privilage of having an NFS server, uncompress the image and put it on it, where it can be accessed through network.

3. Test that you can mount it from another server. Verify you can reach the image file. Debugging incorrect NFS issues can waste lots of time.

4. If you don’t have the privilege, I hope you have a USB floppy. Put the image on a floppy disk:

gzip -dc /path/to/compressed/image/file.gz | dd of=/dev/fd0

(/dev/fd0 assuming this is not /dev/sdX, as it tends to be with USB floppies)

5. Boot the server with the first RHEL4 CD in the drive, or with PXE, or whatever is your favorite method. In the initial boot prompt type:

linux text dd=nfs:server:/path/to/nfs/disk/disk_image.dd

This assuming that the name of the file (including its full path) is /path/to/nfs/disk/disk_image.dd. For floppy users, type dd=floppy instead.

6. RHEL will boot, loading “ahci” module (which is bad) during its startup. It will ask you to select through which network card the system is to reach the NFS server. I assume you have a working DHCP in your site.

7. As soon as you are able to use the virtual terminal (Ctrl+F2) switch to it.

8. Run the following commands:

cd /tmp
mkdir temp
cd temp
gzip -S .cgz -dc /tmp/ramfs/DD-0/modules.czf | cpio -id

cd to the modules directory, and look at the modules. Know which is the module which fits your running kernel. You can do this by using ‘uname’ command.

9. Run the following commands

rmmod ahci
rmmod adpahci
insmod KERNEL_VER/ARCH/adpahci.ko

Replace KERNEL_VER with your running(!!!) single-CPU kernel version, and replace ARCH with your architecture, either i386 or x86_64

10. Using Ctrl+F1 return to your running installer. Continue installation until the end but do not reboot the system when done.

11. When installation is done, before the reboot, return to the virtual console using Ctrl+F2.

12. Run the following commands to prepare your system for a happy reboot:

cp /tmp/temp/KERNEL_VER/ARCH/adpachi.ko /mnt/sysimage/lib/modules/KERNEL_VER/kernel/drivers/scsi/

cp /tmp/temp/KERNEL_VERsmp/ARCH/adpachi.ko /mnt/sysimage/lib/modules/KERNEL_VERsmp/kernel/drivers/scsi

Notice that we’ve copied both the single CPU (UP) and the SMP versions.

13. Edit modprobe.conf of the system-to-be and remove the line containing “alias scsi_hostadapter ahci” from the file.

14. Chroot into the system-to-be, and build your initrd:

chroot /mnt/sysimage
cd /boot
mv initrd-KERNEL_VER.img initrd-KERNEL_VER.img.orig
mv initrd-KERNEL_VERsmp.img initrd-KERNEL_VERsmp.img
mkinitrd /boot/initrd-KERNEL_VER.img KERNEL_VER
mkinitrd /boot/initrd-KERNEL_VERsmp.img KERNEL_VERsmp
exit

If things went fine so far, you are now ready to reboot. Use Ctrl+F1 to return to the installation (anaconda) console, and reboot the system.

Notes:

1. You need to download the “Driver Diskette” from HP site.

2. The latest Driver Diskette will support only Update3 and Update4 based systems. At this time, Update5 has no modules by HP yet. You can compile your own, but this is not in our scope.

3. Avoid using floppies at all cost.

4. Do not install the system in full GUI mode. In the model I have installed the VGA (Matrox device) had a bug and did not allow to reach the virtual text consoles. It disconnected the VGA. If you use GUI installation, you will be required to reboot the system into rescue mode and do steps 7 to 14 then.

5. Underlining the word smp is meant to help you not forget it. This is the more important one.

6. On the system itself, using Xorg, I was able to reach max resolution of 640×480 even with the display drivers supplied by HP. I was able to reach 1024×768 only when using 256 colors.