[rhn-users] Problems with PERC controllers on Dell 2550, etc with RHEL 4 - WORKAROUND

Wed May 25 19:15:35 UTC 2005

On my Dell boxes, I get a kernel panic when starting the RHEL 4 installer and 
when booting the machine after a successful install.  The box hangs when 
loading the aic7xxx driver.  The aic7xxx_old driver does not appear to work 
for that controller, but the aacraid driver works great.

One thing to note is that we're not fully updated on firmware so it's possible 
that newer firmware might fix the problem with the aic7xxx driver.  If anyone 
else has experienced this, please drop me an e-mail.

1) When installing, tell it not to detect hardware and pick aacraid when the 
installers prompts for a controller driver.
2) After the install, boot into rescue mode.  (Might actually be able to make 
the following changes before rebooting. Haven't tried that yet)
3) Mount your filesystems somewhere (I used /mnt/tmp)
4) chroot /mnt/tmp
5) edit /etc/modprobe.conf.  Change aic7xxx to aacraid
6) edit /etc/hotplug/blacklist.  Add aic7xxx as a single line in that file.
7) run mkinitrd to build a new initrd
8) Reboot and throw a party :)

That's it, if I'm remembering the install correctly.  If anyone wants to 
expand on this, ask questions, or offer any corrections, feel free :)

Greg

-- 
Greg Fortune
Enterprise Systems
Eastern Washington University
Phone: 509-359-6690
Email: gfortune at mail.ewu.edu