We really wanted to use Ubuntu 6.06 LTS because of the long-term
support through 2011 however the kernel with this version does not
properly recognize the raid containers created and manager by the PERC
5 controller. Luckily, we knew this before the server was ordered and
had a number of contingency plans. One of the biggest threads we found
about the topic is located here in the Ubuntu forums.

So here is the disk configuration. We had four (4) 250GB SATA drives
with two bays empty. We proceeded to use the Ubuntu 6.06.1 LTS Alternate
CD to perform the installation. The installation was done with all the
primary defaults. Now when the installer is detecting the networking
hardware it did not detect the two onboard GB Broadcom NICs. No
problem, just continue.

Now came the detection of the hard disks and partitioning. The
installer detected all four (4) physical drives (sda, sdb,sdc and sdd)
AND the only large raid volume (sde). (Note: In Ubuntu 6.10, 7,04 and
7.10, only the one large raid volume was listed and correctly so.) At
this point we selected drive sde, the large raid volume and chose to
use all the available space. This allowed the installer to
automatically create the necessary partitions.

The installation continued until the cd was ejected and the message
to hit enter to continue appeared. At this point, DO NOT hit continue.
Instead we need to modify the grub menu list. So we need to goto a
console by hitting Alt + F2.

We are following some of the items listed in reply #20 of the above
thread. You can use his code as a script or do what we did and do it
manually in order to be sure we had everything correct.

chroot /target

echo megaraid_sas >> /etc/mkinitramfs/modules
cp /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-386 /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-386.old
mkinitramfs -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-386 2.6.15-26-386

grub-install /dev/sde

Here is where we change (hd4,0) to (hd0,0) in menu.lst

grep hd4 /boot/grub/menu.lst
cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.orig
sed -e ’s/hd4/hd0/g’ /boot/grub/menu.lst.orig > /boot/grub/menu.lst




Finally, remember that the two (2) onboard nics were not detected.
The nice things is all we need to do is to add the entries for the
interfaces are added and the bnx2 module driver will be automatically
loaded. The thread mentioned above has you do the following in your script:

echo ‘
# The Ethernet network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
‘ >> /etc/network/interfaces

touch /etc/resolv.conf

We simply did the following and decided to goahead and put all the static IP information for the server in now and add the dns servers to the resolv.conf

vi /etc/network/interfaces

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
netmask 255.255.255.0
network xxx.xxx.xxx.0
broadcast xxx.xxx.xxx.255
gateway xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

auto eth1

iface eth1 inet static
address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
netmask 255.255.255.0
network xxx.xxx.xxx.0
broadcast xxx.xxx.xxx.255
gateway xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

And now the resolv.conf

touch /etc/resolv.conf

nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

This biggest things is to get the ‘root’ entries in the menu.lst
file correct. Below is the last part of our menu.lst file. Notice that
the three ‘root’ etries are using hd0,0 instead of what was originally
there, hd4,0.

/boot/grub/menu.lst
…
## ## End Default Options ##

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-26-386
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-386 root=/dev/sde1 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-26-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-386 root=/dev/sde1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-386
boot

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
boot

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

Now press Alt+ F1 to go back to the installer window and hit enter to reboot. That should be it! Now, if for some reason it does not work, don’t panic. If GRUB is loading but not finding the /root filesystem just go back to the GRUB menu, hit ‘e’ to edit the primary menu selection. This takes you to the command line editor, check and be sure (hd0,0) is in the line and not (hd4,0). If not, changeit right there and then hit ‘enter’. When back at the grub menu, hit ‘b’ to boot that selection.

Blessings.

The
long and short of it is that we ended up just removing that Promise
FastTrak TX2 controller card and placed the two drive on the built-in
motherboard controllers. Since we have some other devices we
piggybacked both drives from the same controller which is not going to
be as performance minded as put each drive on a different controller
but for this application it is fine.

I thought that I would post
some articles describing in more detail our steps and experiences in
case it may be of use to others. So here we go.

Ubuntu 6.06 Server LTS Installation with Software RAID Support

1. Boot from the Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Bootable CD (available from here)
2. Choose the Start Server Install Option
3. Follow and answer the standard prompts and entries until you get to the partitioning section
4. This
   is where we did some research and manually created 4 partitions, 2 on
   each drive in order to create two RAID 1 arrays. The best explanation
   of this that we have found thus far is here.
   We deviated a bit from this article however. Our primary difference was
   in the changing of the partition sizes with the largest being the root
   filesystem and the smaller being the swap space.

   1. So
      here is our new physical partition view. (Be sure the root "/" mount
      points are set to "bootable" or you won’t be able to boot into your
      newly install Ubuntu Server.)

      Drive	Partition	Type	Mounted on	Size
      Drive0	/dev/hda1	Primary	/	70GB
      	/dev/hda2	Primary	(swap area)	10 GB
      Drive1	/dev/hdb1	Primary	/	70 GB
      	/dev/hdb2	Primary	(swap area)	10 GB

   2. We then used the above physical partitions to create these two Multidisk devices (arrays).

      RAID device	Type	Mounted on	Size	Members
      /dev/md0	RAID1 mirror	/	70 GB	/dev/hda1
      				/dev/hdb1
      /dev/md1	RAID1 mirror	(swap)	10 GB	/dev/hda2
      				/dev/hdb2

   3. Once
      you have the partition looking like the above, choose that you are
      finished and choose "yes" to the warning about writing these changes to
      the disks.
5. Continue finishing out standard server installation prompts
6. If
   you want to be sure you can boot from either of the two drives in the
   array (like if one goes out which is why you went to all this trouble
   to begin with) then you need to follow the step to get the grub loader
   install on the second disk. This is in the same article under the "Make
   Every Drive Bootable Section".
   1. Essentially boot the server CD again and choose "Rescue a broken system"
   2. Follow the system prompts until you see the "Device to use as root filesystem" prompt. STOP!
   3. Press
      Alt-F2 to go to the second console (TTY2) and hit enter. Here you are
      going to enter the follow command to mount the second drive

      mount /dev/md0 /mnt
      chroot /mnt
      grub
      device (hd0) /dev/sda
      root (hd0,0)
      setup (hd0)
      device (hd1) /dev/sdb
      root (hd1,0)
      setup (hd1)
      quit

   4. Now
      reboot your server. Don’t know how??? "shutdown -r now" (This tells the
      system shutdown. The "-r" says restart after the shutdown and the "now"
      means do it now instead of in 10 minutes or whatever else you might
      want to include there.)
7. Login as administrator or whatever you choose for the username and password in the installation sequence.
8. Perform
   "sudo apt-get update" to have apt-get update the list of packages and
   the "sudo apt-get upgrade" to ensure latest versions of all packages
   are applied.
9. Finally I always like
   to install an SSH server right away so I can finish the system
   configuration form the comfort of my desk, a couch or some other comfy
   place. So run the "sudo apt-get install openssh-server" command.

A big thanks to the Ubuntu community and especially to Derrick Webber whose post was the basis for our successful installation.

Now
in our future new production hardware we will further distribute the
"/" root, "/var" and "/usr" mount points to individual partitions.

Blessings