[BlueOnyx:23679] Re: Installing with a driver update disk (DUD)

[Neil Watson]

Hi Michael, 

Thanks for taking the time to reply. 

I guess I rambled a bit but I did say "the driver disk is fine with
CentOS-8.1.1911-x86_64-dvd1.iso and yet won't work with
BlueOnyx-5210R-CentOS-8.1.1911-20200116.iso ". 

ie I've tried the DUD mechanism with the latest "standard" Centos-8.1
and it worked fine and I still have it installed - and confirms that the
DUD cdrw and mechanism  work for me. 

I would guess that the problem _is_ that the 8.0.1905 first phase
installer doesn't like the 8.1 style driver (changing the driver linkage
between point releases isn't very friendly of Centos either!) 

Hopefully post-8.1, they'll leave the driver format consistent (maybe
until at least 9.0...) 

Will look at the "manual install" (on the 8.1 install I have...)  - or
may simply use the earlier (completely) 8.0 ISO and let it upgrade
itself to 8.1 (with careful installation of the 8.1 DUD driver before I
do it!) 

It seems that Redhat are taking quite a bit of flack over their decision
to discontinue lots of, particularly RAID, drivers for hardware that is
still in very common (particularly "non-commercial") use in the release
of Centos 8! But that's not the Blueonyx community's battle! :) They
were all supported in Centos 7 without any messing about! 

Regards 

Neil. 

MICHAEL STAUBER mstauber at blueonyx.it 

Hi Neil,

First of all: Having to install drivers for a disk controller on any OS
is always a somewhat shitty proposition. Because eventually there will
be kernel updates or OS updates that these updated drivers clash with.
And that can leave you with an unbootable box.

Hence I would recommend to draw a line into the sand: If the OS doesn't
support the disk controller out of the box, then either the disk
controller has to go, or or the OS doesn't go onto *that* box.

> The initial menu says: "BlueOnyx 5210R on Centos 8.0.1905" .... Is it
> supposed to be 8.*1.1911*"?

Yes. I mentioned that here: [BlueOnyx:23580] CentOS 8.1 released

---------------------------------------------------------------------
However: As I'm still using my somewhat improvised ISO building process
the ISO's first and second stage installer will report that it's
installing 8.0.1905 during the graphical part of the install off the
ISO. Don't worry: When it's done, you will have 8.1.1911 instead. Which
is - at this time - the latest version of CentOS 8.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

At this time I do not know a good or clean way how to re-spin CentOS 8.1
ISO's. So I have to make do with a somewhat bastardized build process
that produces working results, but non-standard ISO's.

In essence the latest BlueOnyx-5210R-CentOS-8.1.1911-20200116.iso uses
the first stage installer from the CentOS 8.0.1905 ISO, but has all the
RPMs from the time it was built. So it installs CentOS 8.1.1911 with the
installer from CentOS 8.0.1905.

> The "Driver Disk Device Selection" prompt happens offering the main
> install disk and my "OEMDRV" CDRW... Select the OEMDRV and the install
> examines the drive - but it then prints *"DD no suitable drivers found*".

Yeah. And at that point I am not certain if this is because of the
bastardized BlueOnyx ISO installer, or if it's an issue with your
procedure or their driver-ISO or something else. For example: We already
use additional parameters during startup and I'm not sure if adding
inst.dd to it will do what you want it to do.

To troubleshoot this further I would recommend to use the stock CentOS
8.1 ISO and try that instead. See if your procedure works in general.

If that works, then we know the culprit is the 5210R ISO. And you can
still manually install 5210R via YUM by using this guide:

https://www.blueonyx.it/5210r-manual-install

However: I'd rather check if it ain't possible to ditch the controller
for something that's actually supported out of the box. Because imagine
having to reinstall the box in the future while the phone rings itself
out of your pocket.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.blueonyx.it/pipermail/blueonyx/attachments/20200220/1912d88f/attachment.html>