[geeks] Linux Fibre Channel and Hotplug question

[Ido Dubrawsky]

I've got a client (it's the Congressional Research Service in the Library of
Congress) where we're setting up a development network.  We've set up 4 HP
Proliant DL380 (2U, 4GB memory, 300GB disk partitioned as a boot disk -- with
RAID 1 to a spare boot disk -- and the other disks in a RAID 5 configuration 
providing me with a 210GB disk).

We added last week an Emulex LP1000 PCI fibre channel card into the system, 
upgraded the firmware to the latest version and installed the latest drivers.
We are connecting to an old HP SAN which is presenting the LUNs as Sun disks
and the systems see the LUNS, identify their sizes properly (350GB) but the
two test machines react differently with regards to the device files.

They're both running the following configuration:

  O/S : CentOS 4.2
  Kernel: 2.6.9-22.0.1.ELsmp
  udev: udev-039-10.10.EL4.3
  hotplug: hotplug-2004_04_01-7.6

They machines were both created from the same kickstart file so they're 
identical in terms of software loads.  They're both running VMware Server
beta (cause it's free).

The first machine created a /dev/sda device file but whenever I try to fdisk
the disk it basically replies "Unable to read /dev/sda."  In the log file 
(/var/log/messages) it says that /dev/sda is not ready.  The second machine 
doesn't even create the /dev/sda device file.  I've run MAKEDEV and that creates
the device files but that really doesn't help as I cannot tell whether the 
device files actually are associated with the appropriate device.  Also, I was
under the impression that udev was supposed to take care of this kind of 
hardware addition.  I've rebooted the system that doesn't have the device file
and anaconda never makes mention of adding new hardware.  I'm stumped at this
point.  I'm not sure what I'm missing and I'm hoping someone here can help me
out (or at least point me to a mailing list where I can get help -- and I mean
help on this problem :-)  The "help" I need for the other stuff is more 
complicated :-) ).  Let me know what other information is needed to help 
diagnose this problem.

Ido
-- 
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Ido Dubrawsky, CISSP           		E-mail:          ido at dubrawsky.org
Network Security Architect			   idubraws at siliconsec.com
dubrawsky.org
500 Hermleigh Rd
Silver Spring, MD. 20902
(301) 651-5441 (cell)
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