Installing debian-amd64 on a machine with Adaptec SCSI 2120S Raid controller
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I just got in a new Penguin Computing Altus 1200 server with the
following specs:
∙ Dual AMD Opteron 246 Processors
∙ 4GB Low Profile PC3200 ECC DDR (4 x 1GB)
∙ Hardware RAID: 1-Ch Adaptec SCSI 2120S 64MB w/battery
∙ 35.0 GB RAID 1 Volume (2+0) 36GB, 15,000RPM Low Profile SCA
∙ Slimline 8/24 IDE DVD-ROM
It had a special build of SuSe 9.1 on it when it arrived. As usual,
the first thing I did was slap a Debian CD into the beasty ... this
time, all did not go well.
Odd odd things were happening during the install process. I could
partition the drives, then POOF! the drives would disappear, where did
they go?
After talking to the folks at Pengiun, turns out that the 2.6.10 driver
for the Adaptec 2120S Raid controller (aacraid) kinda doesn't work.
(After several tries, I had been able to get the system booting, but
its drives would crap out in a few mins.,, Note, SuSe 9.1 doesn't see
the drives at all.) They said only the latest drivers from the
Adaptec sight would work... so I took a look at:
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/drivers_by_product.jsp?
sess=no&language=English+US&prodkey=ASR-2120S&cat=%2fProduct%2fASR
- -2120S
and was presented with a dizzying array of choices and selected the
"AACRAID Driver for SuSeE 9.0 & 9.1, SLES 9, Red Hat AS 2.1 & RHEL 3.0"
http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/support/driverdetail.jsp?
sess=no&language=English+US&cat=/Product/ASR
- -2120S&filekey=aacraid_drv_linux_1.1.5-2371.rpm
I used alien to extract the contents of the rpm .... specifically
opt/Adaptec/aacraid/source/. They had a bunch of patches there, but
none were suitable for the 2.6.10 source I had downloaded with apt. I
ended up replacing /usr/src/kernel-source-2.6.10/drivers/scsi/aacraid
with opt/Adaptec/aacraid/source/. Yeah I know sloppy, but it did the
trick.
The machine seems to be running now happily using the kernel I compiled
with the driver from the Adaptec site.
I have no idea how long it will take for these changes to make their
way into the mainstream kernel, but until that time, any folks running
a system with one of these newer Adaptec SCSI RAID controllers will
need to grab the drivers off the Adaptec site and recompile to get your
system working.
Mark Demma
iWin, Inc.
Senior Network and Systems Administrator
http://www.iwin.com/
http://www.playsite.com
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