I'm just wondering whether anyone knows if I can use a Debian distro with the MegaRAID SAS 8208XLP controller. Currently at the moment LSI only supply drivers/support for RHEL/CentOS but I was wondering if anybody knew if there were other drivers so the RAID controller can work with other distributions?
Thanks in advance.
Some resources
http://www.how2forge.info/megacli-for-debian-ubuntu
http://hwraid.le-vert.net/wiki/DebianPackages
http://ftzdomino.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/some-useful-megacli-commands.html
Megacli is the management software for LSI SAS Raid controllers.
Downloading: It can be obtained from the support & downloads tab at the following url (account is required) http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/MegaRAIDSAS9280-8e.aspx
Readme is here: http://www.lsi.com/downloads/Public/MegaRAID%20Common%20Files/8.02.16_MegaCLI.txt
$ unzip -l ./8.02.16_MegaCLI.zip
Archive: ./8.02.16_MegaCLI.zip
Length Date Time Name
--------- ---------- ----- ----
23852 2011-08-12 10:13 8.02.16_MegaCLI.txt
2836620 2011-07-04 12:06 LINUX/MegaCliLin.zip
2748 2011-07-04 12:06 LINUX/readme.txt
0 2011-08-12 00:23 LINUX/
... ... ...
35329519 20 files
$ unzip -d ./megacli 8.02.16_MegaCLI.zip
Archive: 8.02.16_MegaCLI.zip
inflating: ./megacli/8.02.16_MegaCLI.txt
inflating: ./megacli/LINUX/readme.txt
$ cd megacli/LINUX
Archive: MegaCliLin.zip
inflating: MegaCli-8.02.16-1.i386.rpm
inflating: Lib_Utils-1.00-09.noarch.rpm
$ apt-get install rpm2cpio
$ rpm2cpio MegaCli-8.02.16-1.i386.rpm | cpio -idmv
./opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli
./opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64
9502 blocks
It's likely going to work, as there is a MegaRAID SAS driver in the Debian kernel. You will need additional tools (MegaCLI) from here to maintain it from the running system.
That they support only RHEL etc. just mean that they won't guarantee that the hardware is going to work on Debian and that they don't help you get it running. Usually it should work though.
