Just a bit of background ..

By default (configurable using the expose_physicals module options parameter), the aacraid driver exposes the physical disks attached to the controller to the operating system but prevents the disk driver from attaching them by setting the no_uld_attach flag. The disks can be accessed via the SCSI generic driver though dangerous operations are blocked (e.g. writes).

Programs like smartctl are then able to send SMART commands to a physical disks via the associated SCSI generic device node. If the disk is SATA (-d sat specified) then smartctl makes use of SAT (SCSI ATA translation) to “wrap up” the SMART command in a SCSI CDB (command descriptor block) which is then sent via the SCSI generic and aacraid driver to the controller firmware.

The problem

From controller firmware 17380 onwards, the SAT layer (in the controller firmware) more completely implements the SAT specification, particularly with regard to commands that are sent where the host application (for example smartctl) requires the ATA register information to be read back. Typically the commands that would require this are ATA non-data protocol.

Specifically with smartctl, there are two commands used where the application needs to see the ATA registers to determine the status of the drive.

ATA_CHECK_POWER_MODE (ATA command 85h - smartctl needs to see COUNT in the register information to determine the power mode)

ATA_RETURN_STATUS (SMART command B0 with features DAh - smartctl needs to see the LBA mid and high values to determine if the drive is reporting a SMART threshold exceeded error - for example using smartctl -H …).

When a SAT CDB is issued and the host application wishes to see the ATA register information, it sets the CK_COND (check condition) bit in the SAT passthrough CDB. This indicates to the SATL that the ATA register information should be returned in an ATA status return descriptor. Firmware 17380 now implements this as per the SAT specification which requires the SATL code to generate a check condition and in response to a request sense (or in this case using autosense), the  sense key set to RECOVERED ERROR and additional sense qualifier to ATA PASSTHROUGH INFORMATION AVAILABLE, the ATA status return descriptor is then included in the sense data.

Unfortunately, the CHECK CONDITION causes the aacraid driver to also return a “host_status” indicating a controller internal error occurred (DID_ERROR). This propagates back to smartctl which exits. My colleague is currently looking at the aacraid driver to see how to avoid this but in case it helps anyone here is a temporary workaround (modification of smartctl behaviour) - note this will ignore host_status SG_ERR_DID_ERROR which isn’t desirable long-term. From the smartmontools-5.38 source dir …

patch -p1 < diff below  os_linux.cpp


662a663
> #define LSCSI_DID_ERROR 0x7 /* Need to work around aacraid driver quirk */
787c788,791
< return -EIO; /* catch all */
---
> /* Check for DID_ERROR - workaround for aacraid driver quirk */
> if (LSCSI_DID_ERROR != io_hdr.host_status) {
> return -EIO; /* catch all if not DID_ERR */
> }


… and recompile

I’ll post back soon as I know more from my colleague.

thanks, Phil.

Thanks to Vincent for his recent comment ..

Vincent wrote :-

“I’d really like to see some official support for Debian based systems. All the supported systems have a common root. I’d imagine that at least supporting Ubuntu LTS might be something desirable, since that is aimed at being stable and offering long term support.”

I forwarded this to our management team and they are asking what we need to do to provide better support. I would appreciate any comments that you may have  - to start the ball rolling here are some of my own thoughts.

- Provide DEB packaged versions of ASM with scripts that work on Debian based distributions (to avoid having to convert the rpm and manually edit and setup the init scripts) - see http://linux.adaptec.com/2007/11/15/how-do-i-get-adaptec-storage-manager-to-work-with-ubuntu-710/

- Provide support for users other than root to have admin privilege within ASM since the root account is often disabled or password less - an issue raised by Thomas. On this subject, although not yet publically available,  the next version of ASM provides “administrator” equivalent privilege in the GUI for user account aac if a member of the wheel group as an alternative to using the root account.

- Perhaps, as Vincent suggests,  adding Ubuntu LTS to our validation and test matrix and potentially include a driver deb package for folk who wish to use the latest if this would be useful.

Please add your comments. I will be away for a week but would like to present them to the management team mid August.

thanks, Phil

In general, the aacraid driver uses a family match approach to identify RAID cards using ARC (Adaptec RAID Code) firmware and the driver to firmware interface has been kept consistent  (which in most cases allows an older driver to recognise and work with more recent hardware). The driver itself is held in the scsi-misc-2.6 repository at kernel.org so most distributions include a suitable driver. We hope to add a posting soon discussing this in more detail.

In most cases, the shipped driver is fine and there is little or no benefit in updating, however to take advantage of the Intelligent Power Management feature (which required additional code) or updating to a driver which supports the cache module parameter (see my post on xfs write performance - coming shortly), it can be necessary.

For information, the code additions to support Intelligent Power Management were introduced at 1.1.5-2456 - I believe this is the version that ships with Ubuntu 8.10. If you have an earlier driver, the controller will work fine but the power management options in ASM aren’t acccessible.

Our support website contains the aacraid source code in DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) format which is intended to make the process of building and installing kernel modules from source far simpler. More information on DKMS can be found here ..
http://linux.dell.com/projects.shtml/

Here is the procedure I use …

First install the Linux headers
apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

If this fails due to missing dependencies then run
apt-get -f install

Now download and install the Debian DKMS package from here ….
http://linux.dell.com/dkms/

(It looks like the latest stable DKMS package for debian is here
http://linux.dell.com/dkms/permalink/dkms_2.0.20.4-0ubuntu1_all.deb

Download the compressed aacraid DKMS tarball and extract the files. You don’t need the dkms rpm , just the aacraid module source rpm.

You can either convert the aacraid dkms rpm to deb using alien
alien aacraid-1.1.5.2459-dkms.noarch.rpm
and install the resulting deb file using dpkg

or
rpm2cpio aacraid-1.1.5.2459-dkms.noarch.rpm | (cd / ; cpio -idmu)

Now add the module to the dkms tree
dkms add -m aacraid -v 1.1.5.2459

Now build it
dkms build -m aacraid -v 1.1.5.2459

and install the new driver.

dkms install -m aacraid -v 1.1.5.2459

The install process will also rebuild the initrd (saving the old one first).

Hope this helps someone - thanks for reading, Phil.

 Is there any way to get the full SMART info from a SATA harddisk connected to Adaptec 21610SA RAID adapter?
The usual “smartctl -a /dev/sdX” command fails with aacraid driver.

Hi Anssi, thanks for this question, I’ve been meaning to post some information on this as its a question I’ve had from a few of my European customers. Unfortunately on this generation of controllers, the smartctl commands are not passed through to the disks but starting with the 5-series and recently launched 2-series controllers, the smartmon tools work fine. To use smartmon tools with the 2 or 5 series, you need to

I’m trying to get a 1220SA sata raid controller card working under Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy. I have a copy of the adp3132.rhel4.x86_64.rpm but I cannot seem to get it to install. Can someone point me in the right direction? I’ve gone so far as to unzip the rpm and I’m poking around through the installer script but it is quite a large file and I’d hate to mess something up.

thanks in advance for any help you can provide me.

 Jason,

You are trying RHEL4 driver rpm on ubuntu which will not work as the driver rpm is specific to a particular OS version and tied to that OS’s Vermagic.  What I would suggest is to try using the SHIM rpm package instead. The SHIM package is available at the same downloads page under “linux source code”. Install the rpm and follow the instructions to build your own module obj, img and driver rpms for your OS.  To use the SHIM package you need to have kernel sources for the Linux version you are using.

I installed Adaptec Storage Manager Ver 5.20 in a RHEL5 machine. A RAID 10 array is configured and attached to a HostRAID ESB2 controller.

I can see the controller and the array using the GUI. But arcconf doesn’t see controller. For example, ‘./arcconf GETSTATUS 0′ results in ‘Controllers found: 0. Invalid controller number.’.

Kavan,

Since you are using HostRAID controller, you need to use to hrconf instead of arcconf. Please try “hrconf getstatus 1″ and it should work. You can get the hrconf utility from www.adaptec.com/support which is part of Storage Management downloads.

How do I update the BIOS of my Adaptec 3405 from Adaptec Storage Manager on Ubuntu server? I don’t want to have to reboot to DOS. Thanks

Thanks for raising this Roger - using DOS for the firmware upgrades can be a right pain especially as many systems now don’t have floppy drives. The good news is you can do this either from the Adaptec Storage Manager GUI or from the arcconf command line tool. For either method, start by downloading the firmware (as of 12/12/07 the firmware is B15323). Extract / transfer the files ending with a “.ufi” extension to the Linux system.

Before following either procedure, I should add some wise words - please backup any important data and plan the process so that downtime will not detrimentally impact users. 

Using the GUI - start the Adaptec Storage Manager (ASM) GUI and login to ASM using root credentials. On the left side of the screen, right click on “direct attached storage”

- From the drop down menu, select the option “Update Controller Images”. This will start the ROM update wizard, click next.

- On the “choose the ROM update image files” select “add” and browse to the location of the .ufi files you downloaded. There will either be two or four files to select depending on the controller (two for the 3405S). Select all the available files - multiple files are selected by holding down CTRL. Click next.

- The relevant controller should be displayed. (Note that Adaptec Storage Manager can monitor many systems from one GUI. If you have multiple machines with 3405 controllers they will all appear and you can select which of these you wish to upgrade). Select the controller(s) by clicking the check box beside it / them, “next” to the final confirmation screen and then “apply”. The firmware updrade should proceed.

Note if the controller is greyed out in the screen above, this is either because the controller is already running this version of firmware or you are downgrading it. In this case holding ctrl while selecting the controller will force the update to continue (use with caution).

Using the command line utility “arcconf”

- After downloading / extracting the UFI files change directory to /usr/StorMan and as root execute the command line utility “arcconf ROMUPDATE <controller number> <base name>” so in my system with a single 3405 and my ufi files in directory /firmware, the syntax would be “arcconf ROMUPDATE 1 /firmware/AS3405″. When prompted, confirm with “y” and the upgrade should proceed.

 I hope this is a help. If you have any issues then please let me know and I’ll do my best to help.

thanks for reading, Phil

 I have a server running 64bit Ubuntu 7.10 with a 2020ZCR using the aacraid kernel module. I’m trying to figure out how to check the status of the array, but I have been unable to find anything that works. Does Adaptec have some sort of utility that I can use?

That’s a great question Brian and thanks for submitting it. As it happens, I’ve just responded to Philippe from France who was asking something similar although there are a few differences since you are using an earlier product.

Under Storage Manager downloads for the 2020ZCR on our support site, version 4.30 build 16038 of Adaptec Storage Manager is listed however I would suggest using the newer 5.20 build 17414 version for Linux x64 which is posted under our later products. You can download this from any of the newer Unified Serial products for example here :-

http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/downloads/storage_manager/sm?productId=SAS-3405&dn=Adaptec+RAID+3405 

The newer version resolves an issue when converting the downloaded rpm file to deb format using the “alien” command - with version 4.30, alien doesn’t recognise the machine architecture x86_64 as valid, it is expecting amd64. Secondly the later version ships with the libraries that Adaptec Storage Manager needs to use and drops the dependency on having the right version of libstdc++ installed.

If after downloading, you can follow the steps in my response to Philippe (titled “How do I get Adaptec Storage Manager to work with Ubuntu 7.10?”) then it should work.

You didn’t mention if you were using the graphical desktop. If you are then you could use the GUI interface as described in my other note. If not, then you can still monitor the array using either the arcconf command line utility or you can install ASM on a different machine which does have a graphical desktop (Linux or Windows) and add the Ubuntu machine as a remotely managed system (in this case, if you are using the firewall, you may need to open port 34571).

Please do come back to let us know how this goes.

Thanks for reading,

 Phil

Working for a client who has a 2110S installed under Slackware Linux. They would like to rebuild a broken RAID-1 array without shutting down and rebooting the server (to use SMOR). I have been unable to find a Storage Manager download on the Adaptec website that lists support for the 2110S. Can you provide a URL to an appropriate distribution of Storage Manager? Thanks in advance!

The following suggestions are untested, any RAID manipulation carried out incorrectly will lead to loss of data.

The 2110S belongs to the Babylon class of RAID controllers.. This family of Adapters includes all the DPT I2O based controllers and the Adaptec Babylon 3210S, 3410S, 2000S, 2005S, 2010S, 2015S, 2100S, 2110S & 2400A. You will find that Storage Manager products for any one of these adapters will generally work for the entire family, albeit the specific versions may have not been specifically tested together.

In that vein, you may wish to try the Storage Manager for the 2400A located at http://www.adaptec.com/en-US/downloads/storage_manager/sm?productId=AAR-2400A&dn=Adaptec+ATA+RAID+2400A; but I suspect you will need to search for compatibility libraries in your version of Linux as the last build of this product was for RedHat 7.3 (a 2.4 based kernel).

It should not matter if you are using the dpt_i2o or the i2o_block Linux drivers, the ioctls are compatible with the dpteng middleware that ties all the management utilities together and acts as the traffic cop that communicates to the Adapters.

Also, Markus Lidel, the author of the i2o_block driver, was kind enough to continue to support our raidutil, the Storage Manager Command Line Utility, under Linux. We had released raidutil and the dpteng middleware into the public domain. You will find his effort located at http://i2o.shadowconnect.com/download.php. We could not release the GUI portion into the public domain because of Library Licensing issues with a third party. The dpteng middleware that is part of Marcus’ package is supposed to be compatible with the GUI.

Good Luck!