Re: Compaq Smart array and DAC960 support on potato boot floppies -- your help needed

[Jon Marler <jmarler@istrength.net>]

On Mon, 31 Jan 2000, Marc A. Donges wrote:
> On Sunday, January 30, 2000 at 22:41:36 (-0700), Randolph Chung wrote:
> [...]
> > There have been several requests to support these popular RAID devices
> > for potato boot floppies. Unfortunately, none of the current boot
> > floppies developers have easy access to these systems to test on.
> > 
> > If you have such a system, please help us test boot floppies to ensure
> > that they will work. Current boot floppy snapshots are at
> > http://lully.debian.org/~aph/bf-2.2.5-i386/
> [...]
> 
> Hi!
> 
> I recently obtained a Compaq Proliant 2000, which has a Smart Array
> Controller built-in. I tested the boot floppies 2.2.4 and noted that they
> did not support the controller, so I was going to find out how to build
> my own boot-floppies, now luckily you already cared about it!
> 
> I will test the boot-floppy snapshots you mentioned next friday, when I'm
> back home. I will then report any problems that I encounter.

I hacked together a slink boot floppy that has the Compaq Smart Array drivers
and the correct device files in /dev.  The biggest problem that I had was that
I had to manually partition, format, and mount the partitions on the array. 

Apparently dbootstrap did not recognize the array devices as devices that could
be mounted and installed upon.

I would be happy to dd them (rescue and driver) up and send them to anyone in a
pinch that needs them.  Once I got the system installed, it has worked
flawlessly (knocking on wood here).

Jon
jmarler@debian.org