Need information about customizing ISO images

[marty_one]

I know there are similar topics about this that have been posted, but the information I need I cannot find. Im in a situation where I have two new HP DL360 G6 servers, both have a HP Smart Array B110i Sata Raid Controller. Since the raid controller is so new CentOS 5.3/5.4 and RHEL 5.3/5.4 do not have support built into the installer.

I do have a driver for the raid controller which I have used and successfully installed CentOS 5.3 on one of the systems.

The reason I need to customize an ISO is because I need the raid controller driver as part of the installation disc. As these systems are servers and are going to be deployed remotely I will not have physical access to these systems if they need to be rebuilt. I also have to build machines remotely as well using iLO (having a floppy image or usb image of the drivers does not work through iLO).

The installation rpm's can be as is, I do not need to make any changes there. I just need to make sure that the raid controller driver is loaded into memory from the media rather than another media source, before the installer kicks in.

Also please remember I am a bit of a newb here and where I work there is no-one else who knows about this stuff.

Regards
Martin.

[arrfab]

There is no need (at least for such a basic problem) to rebuild a modified iso (with a modified initrd that contains the .ko for the raid controller) : just specify dd= and point to the necessary driver disk (can be on http/ftp/nfs remote folder)
On the other hand i'm surprized that a HP/Compaq raid controller isn't handled by the cciss .ko module .. I don't have time to search for you but are you sure that it's a real raid controller and not a fake one ?

[marty_one]

Do you have an example of syntax required for the dd command to include the driver in the iso image?

[pschaff]

The "dd=" parameter is to specify a "driver disk" for the installer to load. It has nothing to do with the "dd" command, nor creating a new ISO image.

[marty_one]

[quote]
pschaff wrote:
The "dd=" parameter is to specify a "driver disk" for the installer to load. It has nothing to do with the "dd" command, nor creating a new ISO image.[/quote]

Im sorry but this does not solve the problem i am faced with. With the types of systems I deal with, sometimes I wont have physical access to these system to build. I have to do it through iLO (hardware based remote access to the server). At the moment the only solution I can see that will work is to re-author the iso image of CentOS 5.3 to inlcude the raid controller driver when it loads all the other drivers before the installation application starts.

Is there any official documentation/faq/howto to do this?

Regards
Martin.

[arrfab]

[quote]
marty_one wrote:
[quote]
pschaff wrote:
The "dd=" parameter is to specify a "driver disk" for the installer to load. It has nothing to do with the "dd" command, nor creating a new ISO image.[/quote]

Im sorry but this does not solve the problem i am faced with. With the types of systems I deal with, sometimes I wont have physical access to these system to build. I have to do it through iLO (hardware based remote access to the server).[/quote]

Yes it solves the problem you're faced to (assuming your hardware manufacturer gives you a driver disk). What's the problem with the dd= parameter we gave you ? The only time i had to modify the initrd.img file was when i had to setup over the network *and* that the network card wasn't included, which isn't your problem here. You don't need physical access to that system for the dd= parameter to work (see http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.2/Installation_Guide/ch-bootopts-x86.html)

BTW you still haven't answered the 'fakeraid' question, which i think is the real issue here : i doubt such embedded controller is a real raid adapter, and i even think that it's only based on the ICH10 chipset. When you boot the installer, do you see two independant volumes ? If so , forget about that fakeraid configuration and use linux software raid instead ...

[pschaff]

[quote]
marty_one wrote:
...the only solution I can see that will work is to re-author the iso image of CentOS 5.3 to inlcude [sic] the raid controller driver...[/quote]

The current release is 5.4, so starting with 5.3 is [b]not[/b] recommended. I strongly agree with [b]arrfab[/b] that dd= should do what you need, and that you need to give some consideration to the RAID. Please see http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/SoftwareRAIDonCentOS5 for some discussion of the issues.

[marty_one]

[quote]
BTW you still haven't answered the 'fakeraid' question, which i think is the real issue here : i doubt such embedded controller is a real raid adapter, and i even think that it's only based on the ICH10 chipset. When you boot the installer, do you see two independant volumes ? If so , forget about that fakeraid configuration and use linux software raid instead
[/quote]

To be honest im not sure about what you mean by real raid/fake raid as there is a built in hardware controller for it. I might agree with you that it might be a fake raid as in the past with these systems, the raid controller that came with them I not only had to create the raid config but build the array as well. With these new ones you create the raid config but you dont build the array!

[quote]
You don't need physical access to that system for the dd= parameter to work (see http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.2/Installation_Guide/ch-bootopts-x86.html)
[/quote]

Thanks for the link, as you said it definately does answer my question. I was getting really frustrated that everything i tried before getting on the forums wasnt working.

I have one question though. The way HP releases the drivers is in a format created by the dd command (iso format I think), will I need to get the files extracted and put into the same directory layout if i put the files on a nfs/http location?

[marty_one]

I have been trying the dd= option as suggested. I have extracted the files as they were out of the iso image(hpahcisr-1.2.1-6.rhel5.x86_64.dd) provided by HP. The list of files from the archive are:

[code]
[ ] fix_driver_order 06-Nov-2009 19:33 362
[ ] modinfo 06-Nov-2009 19:33 69
[ ] modules.alias 06-Nov-2009 19:33 132
[ ] modules.cgz 06-Nov-2009 19:33 399K
[TXT] modules.dep 06-Nov-2009 19:33 0
[ ] pcitable 06-Nov-2009 19:33 158
[ ] rhdd 06-Nov-2009 19:33 32
[/code]

i then copied these files to a apache webserver that is local to my network (ie: http://192.168.X.X/hpb110i). when the boot loader came up i entered:

[code]
linux dd=http://192.168.X.X/hpb110i
[/code]

but it didnt load or find anything. I also tried:

[code]
linux dd=nfs://192.168.X.X/opt/hpb110i
[/code]

I even extracted out the "hpahcisr.ko" for the 2.6.18-128.el5 kernel (default for CentOS 5.3) and tried to reference it specifically

[code]
linux dd=http://192.168.X.X/hpb110i/hpahcisr.ko
[/code]

after changing the extension of hpahcisr-1.2.1-6.rhel5.x86_64.dd from dd to iso/img (they are the same format arent they?) i tried:

[code]
linux dd=http://192.168.X.X/hpb110i/hpahcisr-1.2.1-6.rhel5.x86_64.img
[/code]

and still didnt work. Is there something basic that i might be missing?

also I am stuck with having to use CentOS 5.3 as the default supported kernel by the driver is 2.6.18.128.el5 or 2.6.18-92.el5. There is no newer releases yet. I have even gone as far as trying RHEL 5.4 (the driver doesnt work with the kernel in this version, i know this because I have built one of the two servers following the steps outlined in the text files, ie: writing the image to a usbkey, running "linux dd" at the boot prompt, pluging in the usbkey to the server for the bootloader to find and load the drivers)

[AlanBartlett]

Something to try.

[quote]
[i][/i]
[ ] modules.cgz 06-Nov-2009 19:33 399K
[i][/i]
[/quote]
The [i]modules.cgz[/i] file contains the driver module. It's a [i]gzip[/i]'ed [i]cpio[/i] archive, so you could extract the [i].ko[/i] file from it and attempt to use it . . . ?