OMSA on CentOS - WAS: Free vs. pay versions (Re: Oracle Sues Google Over Android)

[theBlueSage]

On Sat, 2010-08-21 at 13:08 -0400, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

> > From: discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org [mailto:discuss-bounces-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org] On
> > Behalf Of Jarod Wilson
> > 
> > >
> > > For *hardware* it does not work well.  They require RHEL because they
> > paid
> > > RedHat to develop something proprietary
> > 
> > Huh? Says who? News to me. And I work here. Pretty sure you're
> > incorrect there. Red Hat doesn't do proprietary software development
> > for *anyone*. The software in question is more likely written by Dell
> > themselves. No clue how they're enforcing use only with RHEL though.
> 
> I went down this road before, extensively, and 100% certain.  I had centos
> installed on a dell server with perc controller.  I copied the
> redhat-release file from a legitimate and supposedly equivalent rhel
> installation.  I tried to install OMSA.  It wasn't working - kept choking
> with some sort of library improperly linked or something like that ...  I
> called Dell support, and we worked on it together for some hours.
> 
> The conclusion was, some package (I forget the name now, it's been a few
> years) in centos is the "free alternative" to something that's included in
> RHEL.  It's not the same, and it doesn't work.
> 
> Yes, it is possible to get OMSA installed on centos, by doing various
> tricks, so they say on some websites.  But whenever I've actually attempted
> it, it hasn't worked for me, and I haven't been able to apply dell drivers,
> firmware patches, or omsa on centos.  It's not worth the effort.  I just pay
> for RHEL on dell servers with perc controllers.


Actually it takes about 15 minutes, and it pretty much scrip-table. I
run Centos5.4 on 2 Dell r710's and 2 Dell r410s. Both have OMSA running
perfectly. I also had the run in with the Dell support techs about the
missing PERC drivers, and to be honest found them pretty clueless. They
seemed to me to have a script they were reading off. If your enquiry
fell outside the lines of the script, you are out of luck. Well, after
digging around for a while I found the required packages, and things are
perfectly good now. 
Its not that stuff it requires Red Hat, its that they, support from
Dell, dont know how to do it with anything else.

here's how I did it for r410s : 

	wget -q -O - http://linux.dell.com/repo/software/bootstrap.cgi | bash
	wget -q -O - http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/latest/bootstrap.cgi |
bash
	yum -y update
	yum -y install OpenIPMI srvadmin-all dell_ft_install lsb gcc
kernel-devel
	yum install $(bootstrap_firmware)
	update_firmware --yes
	/etc/init.d/ipmi start
	srvadmin-services.sh  start

        reboot

        tar -xzvf R211003-mptlinux-4.00.38.02-3.tar.gz
        rpm -Uvh dkms-2.0.19.1-1.noarch.rpm
        rpm -Uvh mptlinux-4.00.38.02-3dkms.noarch.rpm

        reboot.

and all done...The only package you need to 'find' is the mptlinux
tarball, and you can actually download that from the Dell site oddly
enough. There are also many other places you can download it. The order
matters, dkms first. Untaring the tarball gives you the other two rpms.

for the r710 it was a different package. It depends on the actual
hardware that Dell put into your machine. :

rpm -Uvh dkms-2.0.22.0-1.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh megaraid_sas-v00.00.04.17-2.noarch.rpm
/etc/init.d/ipmi restart
srvadmin-services.sh  restart

I got the RPMs here from Dag I think, but pbone of the other RPM repos
will have it too.


In the end though, these 64bit 24Gig 4xquad babies run OMSA perfectly,
and RAID and PERC reporting in correctly. I know that if Dell had had
their way they would have talked my boss into buying Red Hat, but I just
believed it wasn't necessary, and fortunately I had at that time no
life, so I was able to spend some time on it (wife was in nursing
school).

here is the output from dmesg regarding the PERC card :


 gen2: instance->base_addr = df1bc000<6>megasas: FW now in Ready state
megasas: max_sectors : 0x280, cmd_per_lun : 0x80
scsi0 : LSI Logic SAS based MegaRAID driver
  Vendor: SEAGATE   Model: ST3600057SS       Rev: ES62
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
  Vendor: SEAGATE   Model: ST3600057SS       Rev: ES62
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
  Vendor: SEAGATE   Model: ST3600057SS       Rev: ES62
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
  Vendor: DP        Model: BACKPLANE         Rev: 1.07
  Type:   Enclosure                          ANSI SCSI revision: 05
  Vendor: DELL      Model: PERC H700         Rev: 2.0.
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sda: 2341994496 512-byte hdwr sectors (1199101 MB)


Hope all this helps. Its not that I mind paying Red Hat, if my company
could afford to we would happily pay for the support. However as that is
not possible, I wanted to point out that Dell OMSA is perfectly doable
on CentOS :) 

Richard

 


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