On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 12:24 AM, Stan Hoeppner
<stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:
>> No. What I'm saying is that Qlogic never shipped, and does not ship, a
>> SPARC/Linux binary of its utility package. And they don't ship the source.
>> If
>> that package is required to program that HBA, then you're hosed, screwed.
>>
>>
> Hi Stan,
>
> thanks for that. Just FYI and FWIW,
>
> They actually do ship packages for RH /SuSE Linux (32-bit and 64-bit) and
> Solaris for x86 and SPARC both.
Note very carefully what I stated above:
"...does not ship, a SPARC/Linux binary..."
This is the thorn in your side.
Right, that's true! None of the packages I had worked in my environment since using the packages for Linux in rpm format won't convert to deb using alien (complains about some libpthread.so.0 library missing which is actually there) and then trying to install the rpm using the rpm utility isn't working either as it can't find '/bin/sh' which is ALSO there, but my guess is that it needs the sh.rpm installed? so I might have to do that as well. I should've stuck with using Solaris/OpenSolaris on Sparc...considering I'm not smart enough to muck around with these cross-platform, porting etc. and not all 3rd party packages are available for Debian on Sparc.
Regarding getting the Qlogic tools installed and working on Linux/SPARC? Yes,
they are that bad. In this regard your ship is already sunk, as you won't be
able to obtain the tools in Linux/SPARC binary format. Qlogic won't give you
source to built your own, either, unfortunately.
Yeah it's all hitting me in the face now!
> I will take your advice however and go pester the people in these other
> mailing lists you mentioned to see if someone's tinkered with the available
> driver and utility packages to reverse-engineer/rebuild/port them to Debian
The problem isn't "porting" to Debian. Debian is just another Linux distro. If
the machine was an Opteron or Xeon you could simply use alien to install the Red
Hat or SuSE RPM and you'd be done in 10 minutes or less. The problem is you're
running on SPARC processors. If you had a Red Hat/SPARC binary RPM available
from Qlogic you could simply use alien with that. But, again, there is no
Linux/SPARC binary. You can't get around this, and no one else has either.
As I see it you have two possible options:
1. Boot from a Solaris/SPARC live CD, program the HBA, an hope the settings
stick in EEPRON/FLASH/etc. This is probably a no-go since you haven't changed
the settings since installing Debian onto the box. This may actually be a good
thing as it means the OS kernel needs to program the HBA on each boot/hotplug.
2. Assuming the device is configured by the kernel as hot plug, you should be
able to find out where in sysfs the parameters for the HBA exist, and simply
echo the parameters you need into those files. Or, it could be as simple as
creating something in /etc. This is still a long shot, but someone on one of
these lists I mentioned (or others) may have this information you seek.
Don't waste time trying to get the Qlogic binary utils installed. Concentrate
your efforts on #2 above. If it's possible to hit pay dirt, you'll do so using
path #2.
Good luck.
Thanks Stan. I really appreciate you taking the time in thinking through this for me. You are right on every account. I even opened a case at QLogic and they simply said, just go and install Redhat or Suse and I'm like WTF? You can't just change OSes willy-nilly. So then they said well just try the RH/suse packages and see if they work, then that didn't either so they were like ok, try and configure the HBA in the BIOS and add targets in the BIOS and then when the OS boots up it'll attach the targets, the problem is that I don't know how to get into the BIOS in these SUN machines. So I'm screwed. Like you said, my only shot at hitting pay-dirt is method #2 above, but I don't know where I'll find that info as to what files that QLogic manager writes to and what it writes in those files to configure these adapters. Maybe I can call Qlogic this time as you suggested as clearly opening a case didn't help and lastly join the iSCSI mailing list and ask if someone there has configured this on their redhat/suse machines and if they can send me their configs so I can copy them to my machine by hand and see if that works
All through this though I'm assuming that since the kernel modules seem to be loaded already and if I'm planning to configure the HBAs via config files I don't need the driver that is available from Qlogic for the Redhat and Suse packages as I don't have to worry about accessing those adapters to configure them?
Thanks again Stan,
\R