# DELL PowerEdge 1750 PERC 4/DI driver

## Futt

Hi again =)

I'll soon be installing Gentoo Linux on a Dell PowerEdge 1750 box, with a PERC 4/DI SCSI RAID controller. I was wondering if anyone had any experience at all with this hardware. As it is, it doesn't look like this controller is supported natively by the 2.4.x series of kernels, but there is a driver for "Redhat Linux" downloadable from Dell support.

After searching the kernel achives and a few other places, some people seem to have severe reservations against using this driver, claiming it causes instability, crashes etc. So that's why I'm posting here - wondering if anyone has any experience whatsoever installing linux on one of these boxen.

The RAID controller itself is apparently a custom LSI Logic RAID controller using a modified version of the "megaraid" driver.

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## skyknight

I just started wrangling with a brand spanking new 1750 myself only yesterday.  The Gentoo Live CD comes with v1.18 of the megaraid driver. Since Dell has gone and changed the PCI vendor and device IDs, a new driver, v1.18a is now necessary.  This has left me in a bit of a jam that I'm trying to resolve...

I compiled the 1.18a driver on another gentoo system of mine, but I'm not sure how to actually get it installed.  I haven't been able to successfully modprobe it in because the file system is (obviously) mounted read only, since it's the Live CD.  I tried tweaking the path info in /etc/modules.conf but to little avail.  It made it such that modinfo found the right .o file, but modprobe still tried to install the wrong, v1.18 one.  Guh...

Now I'm trying to figure out how I can take the Gentoo Live CD image, and reburn it with the v1.18a binary of the driver, but I'm not sure how to do that yet.

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## bwright72

I too have this problem - with the added complication that I don't have another gentoo box to compile the updated driver...

But in case anybody does I found this site:

http://www.domsch.com/linux/#megaraid

which may get you going...

All we need now is an ISO image editor  :Smile: 

Seriously, if anybody gets a solution please let me know...

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## Mithor

Belive it or not I was able to get this to work. The steps I took were probably not the easiest but here they are.

As someone noted 1.18a is needed of the mega raid driver.

Step 1. Install Linux via red hat cd.

Step 2. Setup drives and what not

Step 3. download or copy gentoo tarball

Step 4. Follow all directions until to kernel compiling for gentoo install.

Step 5. Emerge red hat sources and copy megaraid.o, megaraid.c, megaraid .h from red hat sources into gentoo sources overwriting 1.18 with 1.18a. 

Step 6. Compile kernel and probably a good idea to make a backup of your sources incase you ever emerge new ones. This way you still have a copy with the 1.18a driver.

continue with rest of installation.

This worked for me and my spiffy Dell Powervault 770N

And I must say even though Dell told me the server would run nothing but a fileserver propriatary version of windows I got much pleasure out of proving them wrong.

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## Futt

Well I got it working, and it's been running stable so far except for some weird portage problems. But I don't think those are related to the controller at all.

What I did was boot off the 1.4-rc4 CD using the ACPI kernel (which is a fairly recent rs-sources (2.4.21-pre something)) which did indeed have the 1.18a megaraid driver. I was thus able to get the RAID controller working and the volume mounted. Unfortunately you'll be doing the first parts of the install with only one CPU (no SMP support in the ACPI kernel) but I could live with that.

After that, I stuck with the rs-sources for the kernel (now up to 2.4.22-pre something) since I knew it worked; that might not be necessary. I don't know if this applies to any other box but the 1750, and it may be a moot point with the 1.4 final disk, but if you have a weird Dell box and can't find any RAID volumes - try this  :Smile: 

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## bwright72

Well the full Gentoo 1.4 is here and has the MegaRaid 1.18f which solves all my problems. Fantastic work people...

On the other hand there are PERC controllers that do still require the 1.18i or higher so I guess that getting the latest drivers may still be of use.

What is needed is a way of mounting the floppy at boot time, and using any module.o files that are on it during the install.   :Cool: 

Cheers,

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