RocketRaid on Red Hat / CentOS 5

Been dabbling with getting RocketRaid 1740 to work on Centos 5. It was not as easy as I had hoped but below you can view the steps needed for the implmentation.

HighPoint RocketRaid 1740 is only supported on Red Hat / CentOS 5.2 so you have to install it first.

Download the driver from http://highpoint-tech.com/USA/bios_rr1740.htm

You can download the media for CentOS 5.2 at http://vault.centos.org/5.2/isos/

Now you need to go through the Install guide http://highpoint-tech.com/BIOS_Driver/rr1740/Linux/newformat/Install_RHEL_CentOS_RR174x.pdf

To shortly go over what you need to do:

  • Untar the contents of the driver onto a USB flash drive
  • Boot 5.2 with the boot params “linux nostorage”
  • When the graphical X look is up and running, hit CTRL-ALT-F2
  • Mount the USB flash drive
  • copy the contents of the driver to /tmp/hptdd
  • unmount the flash drive
  • run sh /tmp/hptdd/rhel-install-step1.sh
  • Go back to the install, CTRL-ALT-F6
  • Setup the OS as usual all the way till all packages are installed, it says “Congratulations, the installation is complete.”
  • Hit CTRL-ALT-F2 again
  • cp -r /tmp/hptdd /mnt/sysimage/tmp/hptdd
  • chroot /mnt/sysimage
  • sh /tmp/hptdd/rhel-install-step2.sh
  • exit
  • Hit CTRL-ALT-F6 and hit Reboot
  • Voila, the machine should boot normally

Kernel updates can also be problematic, so here’s how I do it

Download the latest Open Source driver version from http://highpoint-tech.com/USA/bios_rr1740.htm

I untar it into /usr/src and you need to modify the script below if you change the path

cd /usr/src
tar zxvf rr174x-linux-src-v2.4-091009-1434.tar.gz

Now, I have a special script to build for the latest kernel

So, if you haven’t already, do yum -y update

Download my build script from http://tommi.org/static/update-rr17xx.sh

cd /usr/local/bin
wget http://tommi.org/static/update-rr17xx.sh
chmod 750 /usr/local/bin/update-rr17xx.sh
/usr/local/bin/update-rr17xx.sh

If everything looked alright, you should be ready to boot into your new kernel

Nagios plugin as an added bonus

I decided to write up a Nagios plugin as an added bonus and you can get it at http://tommi.org/static/rr-state.pl

It should grab broken raid arrays and if the machine is rebuilding

OK, everything is great

Warning, Logical disk is rebuilding

Critical, Failed drive

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