Assistance Making Arch RAID Driver from Source - LSI MegaRAID 9240-4i

Question

Hey all-
I've been on Arch for about 6 months now and love it.  However, I just built out a new workstation and need some assistance trying to get my RAID card up and running.  Obviously, Arch Linux isn't going to be officially supported by any manufacturer, so I went with a card that fit the price and feature set I wanted and decided I'll do battle later.  Later is now and I'm a little stuck.  Here's what I have and know:
First, I went to http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/product … index.html and looked at the different drivers they had source code for.  I decided that the Slackware driver is probably the best place to start since rpms and debs are more distro-specific and since between the other two Slackware is more current than Scientific.  I have downloaded and extracted the source for the Slack driver and am in that directory with a dkms.conf, Makefile, megaraid_sas.c, megaraid_sas.h, and Module.supported in it, along with two folders worth of patches and the like.
My understanding is that since this driver isn't going to be available in the Arch Build System, I should follow the guide at http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Creating_Packages to make a PKGBUILD.  However, to be fair, I haven't coded since my C++ in college and it's been a while.  Specifically, I am lost at the "Download and test the installation" heading.  How am I to test the installation?  I'm on an Arch box right now and the whole point of this was to get something I could successfully install on Arch.
Ouside of being lost there, I assume that when this all finishes, I will have some module package either megaraid_sas.o or megaraid_sas.ko that I can drop into my install and set to load via rc.conf.
If anyone has any light they can shed on this subject, please reply.  If you need more info from me, please say so, so I can provide it.  I tried to at least give a solid overview in my initial post.
-Ryan
Last edited by commonmanthemes (2010-09-27 20:14:40)

Answer 1

for future reference : the linux kernel supports many raid controllers (adaptec, areca, lsi meagraid sata etc ) check kernel source for details.
I recommend you add a non-raid drive to the megaraid system, and install arch on that drive.
Edit : Dieter says exactly what i wanted to say
Dieter@be wrote:Afaik the megaraid will write metadata on that disk.  So you loose some flexibility, say when your controller breaks.  I have my arch install on a disk which is connected to my motherboard directly. (without raid etc)
Next you should create your own pkgbuild .
This Aur pkgbuild for a highpoint sata raid controller (made by me sometime ago) should help you with writing your own : http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=12865
once you have built the package, use pacman -U to install it.
modprobe the megaraid_sas module .
check dmesg and/or /dev to see if your raid drives are now detected.
if they are, you can start mounting/accessing/testing the functionality of your raid drives.
Note : it is possible to install archlinux on drives that require an external kernel module, but that makes the process a lot more complicated.
Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2010-10-05 12:39:30)