(and) Supporting a Promise Tx2000 IDE RAID Card Kevin Griffin Vancouver Community Network

griffink@vcn.bc.ca

Ian Clelland

ian@veryfresh.com

2003 Kevin Griffin .77 17 October 2003 KG minor changes .74 07 October 2003 IC minor changes .7 06 October 2003 KG initial revision This document can be freely translated and distributed. It's released under the LDP License. PDC20271 Software RAID Debian Promise Controller Tx2000 configuration install boot floppy floppies image HOWTO How to install Debian GNU/Linux onto a software RAID system, using a recently-made Promise IDE RAID controller. This particular case covers the scenario wherein: You have a Promise IDE controller that sports a PDC20271 chip, and You have two western digital hard drives (40 GB+). This hardware is not supported by the current Debian bf2.4 installation disks (kernel version 2.4.18). Descriptions of proposed solutions. The mission was supposed to be simple: install Debian onto a pair of hard drives and a hardware RAID controller. It's easy to do, if the Promise controller has the PDC20270 chip on it. This one had a PDC20271 - which is not supported before kernel 2.4.19. So how do you get a customized 2.4.19 kernel into the installation floppies? We need to install Debian onto some hardware which is not supported by any of the debian installation sets. To overcome this, we make a custom installation floppy. Stuff you'll need: Files: rescue.bin, root.bin, a kernel configuration file from the "bf" branch of Debian, and a Linux kernel. rescue.bin. root.bin. kernel-config. A kernel(2.4.22) You will also need two floppy disks. 1.44 MB, 3.5 inch. Don't try this with your old 5.25 floppies. You've been warned. 100-200MB of spare hard drive space, to compile the kernel. A compiler. GCC 2.95 is highly recommended. Rename kernel-config to .config in the kernel source directory. Run make oldconfig Accept the defaults for every question. The kernel-config file is designed for a 2.4.18 kernel. We need to let it know about the new options available in 2.4.22. You can either press "ENTER" for every option /usr/bin/yes "" | make oldconfig then make menuconfig You will defintely need msdos filesystem support - the boot floppy uses this. Also, include support for your network card, and whatever other hardware you might need to install the operating system. Turn on the "experimental code" option in the kernel. Enable the PDC20271 ("PROMISE PDC202{68|69|70|71|75|76|77} support") under the "ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support" menu. We had to enable the high-memory support option in the "Processor type and features" menu, because we were in the enviable position of having 1GB of RAM. You may need to delete other options for now; getting the kernel small enough to fit onto an install floppy is tricky. The existing kernel is 1,263,339 bytes long, and your custom kernel should be no bigger than that. Compile the kernel with make dep && make modules && make bzImage make may lie about the kernel image being too big. Check the file size with: ls -l arch/i386/boot/bzImage Mounting the image: mount -o loop rescue.bin /mnt copy bzImage to linux.bin under /mnt gzip -9 < System.Map > /mnt/sys_map.gz Not necessary but nice: gzip -9 < .config > /mnt/config.gz update debian.txt to indicate new kernel version. umount /mnt. fdformat /dev/fd0 dd if=rescue.bin of=/dev/fd0 dd if=root.bin of=/dev/fd0 We're sorry. If you've been following along at home, and bought two large Western Digital hard drives, you'll notice this didn't work. For some reason Promise controllers working under Linux don't play nicely with Western Digital drives over 40 GB, and refuse to recognize the BIOS-defined RAID partitions. The cause of this is unknown to us. However, the particular drives that we were working with are fast and have three year warranties. So, to make use of these drives we'll install Debian with software RAID support. Stuff you'll need: go get lar1440.bin from http://people.debian.org/~blade/install/lvm/ And one more floppy disk. Build a kernel with all of the software RAID options built as modules, and IDE-RAID support removed. gzip -d < lar1440.bin > image.bin mount -o loop image.bin /mnt cd /mnt mkdir -p lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/md/ cp <linux-src-directory>/drivers/md/*.o lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/md/ umount /mnt create a new blank image: dd if=/dev/zero of=lar1440v1.bin bs=1k count=1440 compress our expanded lvm and raid tools disk into a floppy size image: gzip -9 < image.bin | dd of=lar1440v1.bin conv=notrunc Time to format a new floppy! fdformat /dev/fd0 write it out: dd if=lar1440v1.bin of=/dev/fd0 bs=1024 You now have a disk that contains LVM &: RAID tools, supporting kernel 2.4.22! Now it's time to follow some instructions from: http://people.debian.org/~blade/install on how to use this handy extra modules disk. Unfortunately, the above didn't work for us. I tried installing on a small spare WD hard drive, but the system was still not bootable. However, the hardware gods are merciful. I found a Maxtor 20GB hard drive that I could use to install the system. From there, I was able to recompile a kernel that supported the PDC20271, initialize a software RAID, and move most of the filesystem onto said RAID. Stuff you'll need: A spare hard drive. A Debian bf2.4 installtion CD-ROM. A CD-ROM drive, and a BIOS that will let you boot from there. Installation was pretty typical, because the WD and the ide-raid conttroller weren't even noticed. Nothing to report there. Rebuilt the kernel, with 2.4.22 and necesssary options built in. (software raid, no ide-raid, etc.) At this point I should refer you to the Software Raid Howto: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-RAID-HOWTO.html I used the mdadm command specified there to create a series of RAID partitions that would be useful in this installation: This information is exported from a gnumeric spreadsheet. mount pointRAID levelSize (in MB)Physical SizeDisk(s)device, primarydevice, secondaryraid device name chunk size in kib (kibibytes)filesystem /homeRAID 13072061440WD 1,2hde5hdg5/dev/md032ext3 /exportRAID 1512010240WD 1,2hde6hdg6/dev/md132ext3 /varRAID 14096081920WD 1,2hde7hdg7/dev/md232ext3 /optRAID 110242048WD 1,2hde8hdg8/dev/md332ext3 /tmpRAID 010241024WD 1,2hde9hdg9/dev/md432ext2 /var/local/ amandaRAID 020482048WD 1,2hde10hdg10/dev/md532ext2 swapN/A10241024WD 1,2hde11hdg11N/A32swap Special Notes: If you create and use a /tmp like this, you will need to run chmod +1777 on it so that the sticky bit is set, and you'll be able to generate man pages. Swap needs no RAID (not even RAID0). Disk striping for swap partitions is supported natively by the kernel. /tmp is assumed to be, well, temporary, and is not mirrored. As well this partition was given an ext2 filesystem to save space. The AMANDA holding disk is also not mirrored, in the interests of space. After initializing and formatting the various RAID partitions, I began mounting them onto the existing filesystem in temporary locations and then copying , for example, cp -aR /var /mnt/var. After a successful copy, it remains only to umount the raid from the temporary location and remount it in the permanent one. Edit your /etc/fstab appropriately. The following organizations,people, and programs deserve some kudos: Vancouver Community Network, For being a great place to learn. The cap program, for hiring me (Kevin). Fincon and the IEOGI project, for supplying hardware, space, and no small amount of coffee. Ian Clelland, who took a great many calls and suffered mightily during the process of getting this server running. The co-ordinators down at CAP-VCN, and their patience. They put up with more stuff from above and below than I care to imagine. Ryan Sadler, whose page was invaluable. This document was the essential starting point for the rest of the research.