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I need to install "Fedora Core 15" Linux on to HP Smart Array Controller attached HDD. Problem is Fedora Core 15 kernel do not has HPSA device driver. I tried to load (my own build) HPSA driver (copied) at RAM drive from Fedora installation terminal. So, installation procedure done to HSPA HDD.

But, booting after installation hopelessly failed because there is no HPSA driver in installed Fedora 15 kernel image.

What can be a good solution for this problem?

  • Do I need to compile my own Fedora 15 kernel with HPSA driver?
  • Or, can I use initrd image (somehow) with HPSA driver to enable HDD during boot process?

It's quite long time ago for me to build Linux kernel to install... Please give your consult on it. Thanks.

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  • do you have a RAID already maintained by the SmartArray controller? Also what model SmartArray is it?
    – h3rrmiller
    Mar 25, 2013 at 15:31

2 Answers 2

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Fedora 15 is end-of-life for more than a half year now, better consider either current Fedora 18 (but that means upgrading in a year or so), or CentOS 6.

The current boot machinery uses an initrd containing (among others) the modules for the installed hardware. You could get the source RPM for the kernel (or get the vanilla sources from kernel.org), apply the configuration for Fedora's kernel (under /boot/config-<version>), and use that as the starting point to configure your own, adding the HPSA driver configuration.

Just checked, my /boot/config-3.8.4-202.fc18.x86_64 has SCSI_HPSA as a module. Perhaps Fedora 18 works out of the box; if so, CentOS 6 should too.

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I resolved my issue. Let me explain the steps I did for the recording.

  1. Boot Fedora 15 from HP server
  2. Boot failed and go into emergency shell (from now on just shell)
  3. Mount USB memory from shell
  4. Load hpsa driver => modprobe hpsa, rmmod hpsa, modprobe hpsa_allow_any=1
  5. Mount /dev/sda1
  6. Copy initramfs image file from sda1 to USB
  7. Copy image file to the other Fedora machine (or any working Linux machine)
  8. Unarchive image file and modify 'init' script to load hpsa.ko with argument
    • But, need to do it two times... I don't know why but, hpsa driver isn't loaded properly at the 1st time. Add the below lines to init script file
    • modprobe hpsa
    • rmmod hpsa
    • modprobe hpsa hpsa_allow_any=1
  9. Archive modified initramfs to image (by using cpio and gzip)
  10. Copy modified image file to /dev/sda1 of HP server
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