Installing two RAID controllers on one system

["Rich Braun" <user=44@nabble.blu.org>]

 After much googling and wasted effort trying to get Dell's enterprise-support 
group to deal with this question, maybe I'll find an answer from y'all... 

I want to install two very standard RAID subsystems on one Linux server:  the 
Dell PERC5i/PERC6 motherboard one (comes with any Dell 1950/2950 system), plus 
an external one attached through a SAS card (PowerVault MD1000/3000). 

I'm using the standard Red Hat kickstart (anaconda) startup method via PXE 
boot.  No matter what I try, the BIOS and the Red Hat installation kernel 
refuse to agree which drive to use as /dev/sda.  The installation winds up on 
the wrong drive, and I get a blank MBR boot record in the place where the BIOS 
looks when the system is ready for a reboot. 

The only workarounds I've found are (a) get rid of the second controller 
entirely or (b) yank the second drive out while doing the installation, and 
add it in later. 

These are off-the-shelf commodity components, and it's an off-the-shelf RHEL 
5.1 ISO that I'm using.  So I'm assuming that I'm not the first one to run 
into this problem... 

I know I can solve it by compiling a kernel minus the Fusion MPT SAS Host 
device driver and using that for the installation in place of the stock Red 
Hat one.  What I don't know is how to accomplish the same thing (suppress a 
device driver probe, specifically knocking out the Fusion SAS driver) at the 
kernel boot command line, or to get the Anaconda script to swap the devices 
around correctly the way you can in an interactive installation. 

I've invested about 20 hours in this already and am about ready to give Dell 
the heave-ho for future purchases like this...;-) 

-rich 


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