Installation of CentOS on a server with a SmartRAID V controller

We are going to reinstall Linux on an old server with a SmartRAID V controller. Since CentOS can be updated easily using 'yum', we decide to use CentOS 5.1. There are some difficulties in installation, but we can bypass them and accomplish it successfully.

The basic parameters of the old server:

• 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.40GHz
• 4G Memory
• Adaptec (formerly DPT) SmartRAID V Controller
• 6x 36704 MB SCSI disks
• Intel Corporation 82545EM Gigabit Ethernet Controller
• ATAPI 52X CD-ROM drive

The main points of installation are described below:

0. Make a RAID5 array

Before installation, we use SmartRAID Storage Manager to make a RAID5 array using 5 SCSI disks, and leave 1 SCSI disk as HotSpare.

1. Choose installation media

We have downloaded a Centos 5.1 DVD ISO. But the machine has no DVD-ROM. We make a USB boot disk using images/diskboot.img, but the server can't boot. We have to burn a bootable CD-ROM using images/boot.iso. On the other Linux machine, we mount CentOS 5.1 DVD ISO under a directory of the Apache HTTP server. We will boot the machine by the bootable CD-ROM and choose HTTP installation media.

2. Boot, load RAID drivers

Boot the machine, choose HTTP installation media, configure network parameters and HTTP server addresses. The installation process now enters the graphical interface. But if we click 'Next' on the screen now, the installation process will not recognize any hard disks. This is because: CentOS does not put SmartRAID V drivers into the kernel used in installation process.

The method to solve this problem is: on the other Linux machine, unpack CentOS/kernel-2.6.18-53.el5.i686.rpm, copy the following two drivers

/lib/modules/2.6.18-53.el5/kernel/drivers/message/i2o/i2o_block.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.18-53.el5/kernel/drivers/message/i2o/i2o_scsi.ko

to some directory of the Apache HTTP server so that the machine can see them through HTTP.

Then, in the graphical interface of installation, press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to switch to command line, use 'wget' to get the above two drivers, execute the commands:

# insmod i2o_block.ko
# insmod i2o_scsi.ko

It may cause some minutes when loading i2o_scsi.ko.

After that, press Ctrl-Alt-F6 to switch back to the graphical interface, click 'Next' to proceed. A popup may appear, which says something like:

Error opening /dev/sda: No such device or address

Don't care, click 'Cancel' to ignore it. At this time, the installation process will recognize the RAID5 array as /dev/i2o/hda successfully. We can follow normal steps to install the OS itself.

(In the partitioning step, using LVM may cause trouble - after installation, the boot process of the new system will be extremely slow, almost dead. We don't know the reason yet. After times of failure, we choose to create custom layout, do not use LVM, the boot process afterwards goes smoothly.)

3. Make initrd

After all packages are installed, do not click 'Reboot' right now. Since 'i2o_block.ko' and 'i2o_scsi.ko' are not included in the default kernel's initrd file, the boot prcess will not recognize our RAID5 array.

At the last stage of the graphical interface of installation, press Ctrl-Alt-F2 to switch to command line, execute the commands:

# chroot /mnt/sysimage /bin/bash
# /sbin/mkinitrd -f --preload=i2o_block --preload=i2o_scsi /boot/initrd-2.6.18-53.el5PAE.img 2.6.18-53.el5PAE
# exit

Then, press Ctrl-Alt-F6 to switch back to the graphical interface, click 'Reboot' to reboot the system.

Every time we upgrade the kernel, we should execute the 'mkinitrd' command to rebuild the initrd file, including 'i2o_block' and 'i2o_scsi' modules in it.