View Full Version : FC4: Updated kernel not incorporating unprobed RAID driver

27th May 2006, 12:01 AM

I have been having this problem for some time now, hopefully someone can help me with this. This applies to FC3 and FC4 (FC5 doesn't offer the RAID driver). Currently, I have FC4 installed. The problem is with an LSI Logic CERC RAID card in a Dell Server. I have three IDE drives set up as one logical drive (RAID 5) on this RAID card. The drives are IDE, but the array is presented to the operating system as a SCSI drive (/dev/sda). The problem is in how Fedora deals with this card. So here's what happens.

If I attempt a regular install, it fails when it comes time to access the hard drive, because Fedora chooses the wrong driver. The card requires the (megaraid) driver, but the installation program chooses (megaraid_mbox), which isn't the right driver. I can get around that by using the 'linux noprobe' install option and manually select (megaraid), and everything works...

...until I do a kernel update. Regardless of how I install the new kernel (yum, up2date, rpm) the wrong driver is invariably chosen again. After that, I can still boot (using grub) to the kernel that I originally installed, but not to any new kernels. New kernels panic shortly after the line "Red Hat nash version 4.2.15 starting".

So, is there a way I can either make sure that the correct driver gets selected during kernel update or change it afterwards? It doesn't seem like it should be a big deal. I just need to tell the kernel update program which driver it needs to use to access the RAID card, otherwise it will choose the wrong one. I can still boot the system, as long as I choose the original kernel.

I posted this question on usenet, and they suggested I compile a source kernel. I'll do that if it's the correct fix, but it seems like this should be really simple. I can't be the first person to have an improperly identified SCSI card. I'm also not sure this is even a kernel issue. I have played around with modprobe.conf, but with no success (yet).