Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Issues related to hardware problems
ithierack
Posts: 2
Joined: 2014/07/08 13:53:34

Possible use of driver for HP SmartArray P400(cciss)

Post by ithierack » 2014/07/09 07:15:56

Hello,

i have her a couple of server (HP DL380 G5) with an SmartArray P400 Raid-controller. This controller is not supported(by RH) anymore by the current hpsa-driver which is be the replacment vor the older cciss-driver in rh7, centos 6.5 works fine.

So the question is, is it possible to bring the cciss-driver in the plus-kernel? if not, what would the best way to use this driver, and keep it current with the kernel-upgrades(also generate an images for install on the server, pxe-boot prefered)

regards
Ingo

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

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

Post by TrevorH » 2014/07/09 10:29:20

Don't forget that CentOS 6 is supported until the middle of 2020 so you have plenty of time to run that. In 2020 a G5 will be much like a 486...
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

anderson_thomas
Posts: 96
Joined: 2011/11/21 10:19:41

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

Post by anderson_thomas » 2014/07/12 05:38:19

Hi,

I had the same problem. A HP SmartArray P410(cciss) is still working. The y are in HP DL380 G7 for
example.

Thomas

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

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

Post by TrevorH » 2014/07/12 10:57:34

The p410 uses the hpsa driver not cciss but hpsa doesn't support the older controllers like the p400.
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

anderson_thomas
Posts: 96
Joined: 2011/11/21 10:19:41

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

Post by anderson_thomas » 2014/07/12 11:47:38

Hi TrevorH,

learnd something new!

But I can say on HP DL380 G7 with SmartArray P410(i) everything works as expected.

Thomas.

rusty3995
Posts: 1
Joined: 2014/07/22 09:07:07

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

Post by rusty3995 » 2014/07/22 09:29:18

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

User avatar
TrevorH
Site Admin
Posts: 33202
Joined: 2009/09/24 10:40:56
Location: Brighton, UK

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

Post by TrevorH » 2014/07/22 09:55:23

Interesting info, thanks.
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

ithierack
Posts: 2
Joined: 2014/07/08 13:53:34

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

Post by ithierack » 2014/07/25 16:56:18

Did not work for me with only "hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1" need also to put before "hpsa.hpsa_simple_mode=1"

Also

"hpsa.hpsa_simple_mode=1 hpsa.hpsa_allow_any=1"

marcis
Posts: 1
Joined: 2014/08/13 22:46:12

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

Post by marcis » 2014/10/16 08:19:34

Be careful with using CentOS 7 and RAID controllers that are supported by cciss module. I also used "hpsa_simple_mode=1" and "hpsa_allow_any=1" module parameters for customer server I had to install - DL 360 G5 with P400i. I even installed "hpacucli" from HPs "MCP" repository for CentOS 6 to query physical and logical drive status. To this point all was fine, but I could not use other tools from MCP repository (snmp agents and System Management) due to unresolvable dependencies (it's was CentOS 6 repository after all).

HOWEVER, what I wanted to actually say is BE CAREFUL. HP recently published MCP repository for CentOS 7 and I was glad that before finishing my work, I will be able to also install HP tools for appropriate OS version. But, "hpacucli" was not there any more, there is "hpssacli" using which You apparently can screw up logical drives. "hpssacli" (apparently) led the HW to fail one of physical disks every time I queried controller/logical disk/physical disk states. I can't provide any more details as I didn't bother debugging this any further and just installed CentOS 6 (support until 2020 is more than enough for this server). Maybe for others this will work fine because besides unsupported OS version on this server there were another key component, that might have lead to this problem - non-HP disk drives (ie. drives with non HP firmware).

StormCloud
Posts: 1
Joined: 2014/12/18 06:24:46

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

Post by StormCloud » 2014/12/18 06:42:11

In addition to the mentioned work arounds, one can add the kmod-cciss packages from ELRepo after getting the base system up. This is particularly useful for those wanting to use the older model HP's in a Lab or Test environment such as ourselves who are running the latest OpenStack RDO Labs on older Kit.

This link has a bit more detail on the kmod:

http://www.montanalinux.org/cciss-raid- ... -el70.html

Add ElRepo:

Code: Select all

rpm --import https://www.elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org
Install ElRepo:

Code: Select all

rpm -Uvh http://www.elrepo.org/elrepo-release-7.0-2.el7.elrepo.noarch.rpm
Then install kmod-cciss:

Code: Select all

yum install -y kmod-cciss

Post Reply