making it work

[quickblueink]

I know nothing about raid or how to use it beyond the philosophy of what it is for (ie-storage/backup).i have acquired an hp netserver lf, with 4 physical Disks in it. there are a couple of problems:
1. first off, the raid controller is not installed (or there isn't one on the mother board or in a PCI slot--what does it look like on the motherboard?)
2. second, i don't think the software is installed (or even present on the machine, for all i know)
3. last, it might not even have BIOS installed, and i don't even know if that has anything to do with RAID.

basically this is what i know: the computer has netware installed but NW must be started manually from the DOS prompt. i am trying to install redhat on it and after the first few install screens i am given an error that linux CANNOT DETECT ANY DRIVES TO WRITE TO, at which point the whole thing shuts down and goes back to dos.
so i have to make raid work to access the drives to install linux. is that right? how does one go about doing that?

thanks,
M.austin

 

[ianf]

If you had a RAID controller installed you'd notice it being in the boot sequence.

HP Netservers have an optional RAID controller. In practice this means that all the hardware is integrated into the motherboard and they sell you a single chip to enable it's functionality, I think they come in 1M, 2M or 4M versions depending on your netserver.

The BIOS is built into the RAID controller, so unless some malicious soul has wiped the RAID BIOS before selling it to you, it will be there and visible on boot.

This type of RAID controller works below the OS. In other words it does it's thing and presents the OS with a set of logical volumes or partitions, the names depending on your OS of choice.
So you'd probably boot from CD or floppy into a little DOS app to configure the RAID controller, then reboot with the OS installation disks and install onto the RAID set that you had just configured.

But it doesn't sound like you got one. Never mind. Ian

"IF" is not a word it's a way of life

 

[asta]

With respect to ianf, I don't think he is 100% right. HP NetRAID comes as a PCI adapter card that must be installed in your netserver. He is right that it comes in various guises (1, 1Si, 3Si etc) which basically provide you with differing SCSI support, numbers of SCSI channels and numbers of disks supported. He is also correct that it presents the operating system with a logical volume(s) made up of physical volume(s) configured as RAID arrays.
Typically you would install the card, install and configure the disks (set SCSI id's that is) and boot from the HP navigator CD and use the provided tools to configure the RAID setup. Then you would create driver diskettes relevent to your operating system (again from the navigator CD) and install your OS.
My manual lists Linux 5.2 and 6.0 as supported, but does not list the Netserver LF!

Dean.

 

[quickblueink]

I appreciate it yall. I have looked into your advice, fiddled with it more, and come to these revelations (at the risk of sounding like a moron):

The BIOS is fine. when it boots it looks for a cdrom somethin-er-other that was taken off the machine, and whatever that was, the bios for IT is missing, not the system BIOS.

the RAID is fine. i can go into Netware and through there get access to the logical drives.

the problem, then, is that Linux (at least the install CD's) does not recognize the drives as valid drives to write to, prolly because of much outdated and incompatible Drivers.

the question moves to does anyone know where to find a linux driver that will read a circa 1914 a.d. HP netserver LF? Really it's a linux question, so ill go to that forum and ask them, i just thought i would ask here. That way, yall can jump in and tell me i'm completely wrong.

thanky.
M.austin

 

[ianf]

Apologies, mixing up my Dells with my HPs. Ian

"IF" is not a word it's a way of life

 

[panos]

I may be wrong but if this box was a netware server it is probably set up with netware partitions as such maybe linux partitioning software doesn't see them. I would try to boot from a floppy and fdisk the drives, create a larger dos partition and re-try the linux install.

Cheers