[Wylug-discuss] Installed a PCI raid card, but not quite finished?

[Nigel Metheringham]

On Tue, 2004-10-26 at 15:52 +0100, Nick Moulsdale wrote:
> I have used this great help to install my 2 x 200 Gb EIDE HD's as secondary Units. Boot is from 1 of 2 SCSI 69 GB disks. I have not carried out last 2 lines above as instructions with the linux drivers say
>
> # cp -f iteraid.o /lib/modules/2.4.20-24.8/kernel/drivers/scsi
> # chmod 755 /sbin/mkinitrd
> # mkinitrd -f --preload scsi_mod --preload sd_mod --with=iteraid /boot/initrd-2.4.20-24.8.img 2.4.20-24.8
>
> 1st 2 carried out OK and then cd'd to /usr/src/ITERaid, but last one
> fails will not allow writing to img file.

Thats because there is already an initrd file there - rename it out the
way and rerun the command.

> I thought your last 2 lines might substitute, but I do not understand
> iteraid.ko. I don't think I have this file?.

Thats a kernel 2.6.x kernel module.  2.4.x and earlier uses .o files for
modules.

> I have RH8,

hopefully with updates - although I see even Fedora Legacy don't support
RH8 any more so you are going to have significant missed updates,
including security related ones.

> have downloaded the source files and modified them to match my Linux
> version. Then I compiled them, did modprobe sr_mod and modprobe
> sd_mod. insmod iteraid.o worked OK and dmesg gave the correct mesg.
> I've fdisked the 2 disks and created ext3 filesystems on them and I
> can read and write to/from them. But I do not want to have to remember
> to do this stuff again on a reboot.

You shouldn't need to.  As long as the root filesystem isn't on these
disks it should simply be a case of putting the modules on a path where
they can be seen by modprobe, adding an entry into modules.conf to cause
those drives to be loaded, and it should just work.  Hacking initrd is
another way, but is likely to fall apart on the next kernel upgrade.

> I've editted /etc/fstab, but I cannot make my mind up if the numbers
> should read
>
> defaults 1 1 or 2 2 or 0 0. I think it should be 2 2?

Nope.
First number (field 5) is backup frequency for dump - since no one would
use dump for backups (you need to take the filesystem offline to get a
stable backup using dump), you should have 0 for this field.

The second number (field 6) is the fsck pass.  Set these to 2 as
recommended in the man page:-
	man fstab
Do not set it to zero unless you understand the consequences.

Personally I'd avoid an IDE card which is not supported by the
mainstream kernel.

BTW Your mail server appears to be listed in some blacklists - I'm
getting SpamAssassin positives on your mail purely due to your IP
address, which is pretty unusual.

	Nigel.
--
[ Nigel Metheringham           Nigel.Metheringham at InTechnology.co.uk ]
[ - Comments in this message are my own and not ITO opinion/policy - ]