Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Issues related to hardware problems
dbdataplus
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Re: Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by dbdataplus » 2015/08/23 01:24:21

Let me give you my two cents.

When I first went to upgrade 1 of 2 G5 servers to Centos 7 and encountered this problem and read the threads, I had several thoughts.

First -- if you can set some flags (hpsa.hpsa_simple_mode=1, etc.) and get C7 to recognize the drives - then the driver works, it's just that someone who knows better than you do has decided that he knows more than you do about what you need to do -- and has taken action on your behalf. Thank you for saving me from myself.

But beyond that, if the controller manufacturer no longer provides firmware updates, etc. then perhaps it IS time to move on ... so I buy a pair of P410 controllers, which ARE supported. Then we find the cables to the backplanes are different, so we run around getting adapters. Then we find that the batteries are different, so we run around getting those.

NOW we've upgraded our system. Oh wait ... not so fast. The Raid 6 that was available on the P400 isn't available on the P410 ... unless you pay MORE money for a license pack. Goody. I had too much money anyway.

So now we're ready to rock & roll with Centos 7 !!!

Oh now ... guess what? When the P410 sees non-HP SATA drives in the card cage, it reports those drives to be OVERHEATED. Apparently the P410 reads temp readings from non-HP drives incorrectly and assumes the worst ... and of course then puts the cage fans into turbine-mode take-off speed. Because HP-branded 500Gb SATA drives at $300 a piece is what i secretly wanted!

This has become like going to a doctor that tells you to give up salt ... so you give up salt.
Then he tells you to give up red meat, so you give up red meat.
Then he tells you to give up sweets, so you give up sweets.
Then he tells you to give up beer.

And you realize that it's time to give up doctors.

HP and I had a great run, but since what I use and like and care about is now 'legacy' to HP and to RH/Centos maybe it's time to reconsider my loyalties.

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fakemoth
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Re: Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by fakemoth » 2015/08/25 05:30:49

@dbdataplus

To get this to work is as simple as viewtopic.php?f=49&t=51302 . HP is a crap company nowadays (except for The Machine project, but wait till it gets to the sales departament), with ink cartridges tactics for server hardware and stuff :) And you also have been avenged multiple times in the forums. Not much love for them; Dell, customs Supermicro and System76 is what people are talking about when dealing with servers. Lenovo... suffice to say that at a huge conference I heard with my own ears an Eastern Europe boss and some tech guys saying that there are no other OSes for servers besides Windows and that Microsoft is their strategical partener so on, so on... Don't know what they bought from IBM, but sure not their philosophy. They barely mentioned VmWare sa go figure how they support Linux and BSD...
Don't take the name of root in vain!

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fakemoth
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Re: Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by fakemoth » 2015/08/25 05:46:27

Oh, wait (kinda' offtopic), they already killed it http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/2078 ... chnologies !
Don't take the name of root in vain!

Blisk
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Re: Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by Blisk » 2015/08/27 13:06:01

rusty3995 wrote:Managed to install Cent 7 on a DL380 G5 using the hpsa drivers

At install press tab to get the install options and add "hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1" to the end
Install as normal
When you reboot it will fail as it now can't find the hard drives

Boot from DVD into rescue mode, press tab to get the options and add "hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1" to the end
change to the installed system

Code: Select all

chroot /mnt/sysimage
Then add "hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1" to the grub2 cfg file at /etc/default/grub
remake grub 2

Code: Select all

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
reboot and should be fine
you may get a message about selinux relabeling

seems to be stable and updates ok

I am trying now to install centos 7, all goes OK until that grub2

I don't have grub2 or grub2.cfg file at /etc/default/grub

so in which file I should add "hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1"

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fakemoth
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Re: Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by fakemoth » 2015/08/27 13:54:00

Please read the entire thread first - this method I don't think should be used because it is not that simple, and the results can be unpredictable; so follow the above link and get the proper driver from ELREPO, you also have a step-by-step guide. Easy-peasy.
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Re: Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by Blisk » 2015/08/27 14:22:55

I have installed kmod-cciss-3.6.26-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64.rpm

now it stuck on Reached targed basic system

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Re: Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by Blisk » 2015/08/27 17:10:16

I have installed again centos 7 with help of this thread, now works great
viewtopic.php?f=49&t=51302&start=10

ChrispySaurus
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Re: Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by ChrispySaurus » 2016/04/30 19:18:46

Hello all! Sorry, this is my first Post, forgive any format errors. I have an interesting problem. I have a new server, in which I have added an HP P400 controller. CentOS 7 is installed, using the internal drives, but I need the P400 to communicate with an external array via scsi, where resides 4TB of company data. The original Server an HP Proliant G4 350, flamed out Tuesday. Now the only copy of th configs are saved into the CentOS 7 box, which cannot talk to the P400 thru cciss?

Any ideas?

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TrevorH
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Re: Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by TrevorH » 2016/04/30 20:06:02

If you already have CentOS 7 installed then you can just google for "ELRepo" and then install their elrepo-release package and once done, yum install kmod-cciss and you will get support for it.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

mdella
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Re: Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by mdella » 2017/02/14 21:04:48

So... I have several dozen HP DL360G5 machines... Some notes in my experience trying to do everything in this forum...

My DL360G5 comes with the P400 raid controller inside of it. Personally I'm trying to use the LVM rather than the controller but... with several dozen machines, I don't want to start cracking open cases to get this setup to work. I discovered that regardless of all that was mentioned before, if your P400 firmware is < 4.x, nothing with the hpsa driver will work regardless. And you can't upgrade the P400 until the BIOS is newer than 2009.

This all created a quandary until I went and downloaded the Smart Update Firmware DVD v10.10 located at http://h20564.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/swd/pub ... 925937f38b
Burned this on a DVD and booted off of it. Let it do an unattended firmware update of the boxes (turns out it updated something like 13 things inside each server) with resulted with things like my P400 running version 7.22 (I think) rather than the previous 2.08, BIOS updated, etc.

Note, the Firmware DVD 10.10 is the last one of the series to be produced. From that point on, HP moved to HP Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) which requires contracts, etc to use. Since the G5 hasn't really been touched since 2011, its sort of a non-issue. but wanted to point that out.

Ok, with all of that out of the way, now I can start looking at what to do next...

During the bootup process, I hit F8 as the P400 was initializing. I deleted all logical partitions then created one seperate logical RAID0 partition per drive in the machine (effectively connecting 1-for-1 each drive to a logical drive so that LVM managed them, not the P400). Followed all the instructions previous about adding "hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1" to the booting system and later grub system and things worked fantastically. My "pvs" showed each drive and the "vgdisplay" showed them all in the pool... I had to use "lvconvert -m1 root", etc to actually mirror the partitions but it all worked fine.

I install v9.40 of the hpacucli (and of course due to problems with HPs packaging, I had to install libstd++-4.8.5-11.el7.i686 prior to get it to install) and as pointed out earlier, it didn't see the controller (even though the system is working fine). So I used the instructions to install the kmod-cciss.x86_64 driver module. Got all of that installed, rebooted, verified with "kmod list" that it was in there... and...

...no joy on the hpacucli...

and now I'm stuck. The machines work fine, I can do everything I want to, but I can't see the controller. I know I have a couple old drives that SMART is complaining about, but I can't look/talk to the controller to see what is going on. I'm replacing iffy drives right now, but down the road I want the hpacucli to actually talk to the P400 controller.

So... after going back and forth on this thread ad-nauseam... I'm now stuck.

Suggestions on what to do next?

Marcos

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