Due to the apparent need for a quick howto for building a driver-iso for the ARECA 18XX-series RAID-cards for XenServer i’ll post one here. It will only be available in English.
Step 1: Setup DDK
- Download the DDK from http://www.citrix.com/xenserver
- Mount or extract the iso, use the «import»-function in XenServer to import the ova.xml-file.
- Start the DDK-appliance, configure network if needed.
Step 2: Driver
- Login to the DDK Appliance as root.
- Create a directory called /root/driver:
mkdir /root/driver
* Download the source files from ARECA to /root/driver and extract them, and rename the directory:
wget http://www.areca.us/support/s_linux/driver/arcmsr.1.20.0X.15-110622.zip unzip arcmsr.1.20.0X.15-110622.zip mv arcmsr.1.20.0X.15-110622 arcmsr-1.20.0X.15
* Copy the Makefile and the helloworld.spec-file from /root/examples/driver:
cp /root/examples/driver/Makefile /root/driver/ cp /root/examples/driver/helloworld.spec /root/driver/arcmsr.spec
* Modify the Makefile and the arcmsr.spec-file with the correct Vendor names, versions and so on. Should be self-explaining.
- In the makefile in this example: RPM_VERSION:= 1.20.0X.15 and RPM_RELEASE := 110622
- In the arcmsr.spec in this example: VERSION: 1.20.0X.15 and Release: 110622
Step 2.1: Modifying the source files from ARECA
- Due to a small section in the source from ARECA creating issues we have to modify /root/driver/arcmsr-1.20.0X.15/arcmsr.h, remove the following section from the file:
#if !defined(RHEL_RELEASE_CODE) && LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(2, 6, 33) enum { SCSI_QDEPTH_DEFAULT, /* default requested change, e.g. from sysfs */ SCSI_QDEPTH_QFULL, /* scsi-ml requested due to queue full */ SCSI_QDEPTH_RAMP_UP, /* scsi-ml requested due to threshhold event */ }; #endif
Step 2.2: Building the drivers
- Now it’s time to build:
cd /root/driver make build-srctarballs make build-iso
* Now you should have a working driver-iso in /root/driver/arcmsr.iso, this can be loaded as a supplemental pack during the installation of XenServer.
Thank you so much for this article!!
My pleasure. Had to make one after the great help i got from the XenServer-guys at the forum.
Hi There,
I was wondering how you found the performance of the Areca 1880 card using Xenserver?
Also, I was wondering if you managed to get the smtp traps working with xenserver?
How do you find it overall compared to say a standard RAID card found in a HP or DELL?
Thanks
The performance is quite good. Haven’t noticed any decrease in performance compared to the HP-cards. But you MUST have the BBU and Write-back-cache enabled. Haven’t used the smtp-traps.
Hi.
The performance has been good, can’t say i have noticed any noticeable difference between the ARECA-card and HP’s RAID-cards.
Haven’t tried the smtp-traps unfortunately.
Hi,
Thank you for this guide,but i have some troubels. I have completed the compiling of the driver but When i try to load the driver I get a warning like » doesn’t find a compatible driver» we are using xen 6.02 and for compliling the latest ddk. If you want i can e mail you the iso so you can check it out where im wrong.
Thx