We have two legacy( i.e. old) servers that are running SLES 10 GA. After a recent reboot we started getting the following error repeating every second or so:
Apr 27 17:17:29 uk-provdb3 kernel: status = 1, message = 00, host = 0, driver = 08
Apr 27 17:17:29 uk-provdb3 kernel: <6>sd: Current: sense key: Illegal Request
Apr 27 17:17:29 uk-provdb3 kernel: Additional sense: Invalid command operation code
Apr 27 17:17:29 uk-provdb3 kernel: FAILED
Both servers are Dell 2950’s w/ PERC 6/i Raid controllers. Some searching has revealed that these errors are actually erroneous and to stop them we need to update the megaraid-sas driver and the DKMS (Dynamic Kernel Module Support) along with the PERC 6/i RAID controller firmware. We have tried to recreate the issue on the same hardware but with SLES 10 SP1 and we can’t.
Since these two servers are Production we are limited to what we can do and we have two options:
- Just install the megaraid-sas, DKMS and firmware.
- Install SLES10 SP1 to see if that resolves the issue.
We don’t have a non Production server to test option 1 so we would like to do option 2. This would also bring us in line with our other SP1 servers.
Is there any way we can find out if SLES 10 SP1 resolves this issue?
What is the best method to put SP1 on these servers? (We have no current support)
We know, we know just go to the latest version but this will take time and we need to get this resolved ASAP.
Any help would be appreciated!
If it’s really SLES10 GA without any patches, the offline upgrade would be probably the best option. To boot from an SP1 dvd and upgrade the system, that is.
If you have access to patches, you should apply all pre-SP1 patches first and then upgrade to SP1 - either offline or online, both will work.
There is some risk, of course, as in case of every change to a production system - you should make a complete backup first. How you make this, depends on you, there are many choices - dd, tar, rsync, backup software etc., it’s not really important which you choose. However what’s very important, is that the backup must be complete and restore must be possible, though. Test it, if you don’t have more servers, then you still have virtualisation.
But if you have downtime and an approved change, and a working! backup, I’d recommend you to make a progress and go until SP4 
[QUOTE=enovaklbank;4497]If it’s really SLES10 GA without any patches, the offline upgrade would be probably the best option. To boot from an SP1 dvd and upgrade the system, that is.
If you have access to patches, you should apply all pre-SP1 patches first and then upgrade to SP1 - either offline or online, both will work.
There is some risk, of course, as in case of every change to a production system - you should make a complete backup first. How you make this, depends on you, there are many choices - dd, tar, rsync, backup software etc., it’s not really important which you choose. However what’s very important, is that the backup must be complete and restore must be possible, though. Test it, if you don’t have more servers, then you still have virtualisation.
But if you have downtime and an approved change, and a working! backup, I’d recommend you to make a progress and go until SP4 :-)[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the quick reply! We tested the offline upgrade using a SP1 dvd on a test server and it worked pretty well. We’ll work on the backup and then taking care of the Production server.
The next issue is that the server is 2000 miles away and does not have the SP1 dvd in the drive. On our test server we were only able to reboot and run the SP1 install choosing upgrade. Is there a way to run the upgrade from an .iso or files on a remote server?
Is there a way to run the upgrade from an .iso or files on a remote server?
If the server does not have iLO/RMC/RSA etc., then a remote AND offline upgrade is not possible, I think.
You could use PXE boot, but you have to configure a PXE server and change the boot order in the bios of the machine to boot from PXE.
If you already booted the DVD, there are options for using CIFS, HTTP, FTP, and NFS repositories…
We only have a DRAC card which is almost as good as being there. Since it is production as are going to send someone to put the SP1 dvd in the drive and do the update that way. We did a test on a similar server in our office and it worked perfectly.
Last question: how can you tell which version of the megasas or mega-sas driver is included on our SP1 dvd?
Unfortunately, they only started noting the driver versions with the SP2 release notes.
http://www.suse.com/releasenotes/x86_64/SUSE-SLES/10-SP2/#driver-updates-storage
So I can’t point you directly at a version number right now - one stupid solutions which comes into my mind, is to extract the megaraid_*.ko files from the DVD (with mc - midnight commander, they’re under suse/$arch/kernel-smp-$version → CONTENTS.cpio → /lib/modules/$version/kernel/drivers/scsi/megaraid/) and do a strings megaraid_sas.ko | grep version
Or if you have an already installed SP1 system, simply issue modinfo megaraid_sas .