I have a Dell 2850 server with a PERC 4 RAID controller installed. Installing NW 6.5, I do a load using the Dell Server manager and everything loads great. Try to add products not installed by this default installer (does not give a choice on products)and when the server restarts it can not/will not load the PERC 4 RAID controller. I have manually made a disk with the drivers and am trying to load the drivers by selecting them from unlisted driver option. It searches the floppy and comes up with the driver screen with a blank description bar and I can go no further. I suspect the .ddi file has a faulty description header but am not that familiar with what it should be. Has anyone ran accoss this problem? If so do you have any suggestions on the fix. Have tried searching the Novell site but got nowhere.
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Netware 6.5 and PERC 4 drivers 1
- Thread starter thule
- Start date
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1
- #2
marvhuffaker
MIS
One thing I know about Dell and PERC is that there are two VERY DIFFERENT drivers for different RAID cards.. They are only named slightly different. One is older than the other but the naming standards don't make sense. One of them is specifically for PERC4, but wait, some PERC4's use the older one... that's the logic.
Forget about the install scripts and stuff, they don't give you enough control over the situation and are unnecessary. The easiest way to deal with RAID driver issues is this.. Take the driver that is SUPPOSED to work, and make sure it is in C:\NWSERVER. We're talking about the .HAM file here.
Start the server with 'SERVER -NS'
Once you get a server command prompt, load the Perc driver like this:
LOAD <Insert correct HAM file HERE> If the filename was PERC4.HAM, it would be 'load perc4.ham'
If it fails, look at the error message, you have the wrong driver. Try the other driver. If it loads, put the command into C:\NWSERVER\STARTUP.NCF.
Good luck.
Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting, Inc.
Forget about the install scripts and stuff, they don't give you enough control over the situation and are unnecessary. The easiest way to deal with RAID driver issues is this.. Take the driver that is SUPPOSED to work, and make sure it is in C:\NWSERVER. We're talking about the .HAM file here.
Start the server with 'SERVER -NS'
Once you get a server command prompt, load the Perc driver like this:
LOAD <Insert correct HAM file HERE> If the filename was PERC4.HAM, it would be 'load perc4.ham'
If it fails, look at the error message, you have the wrong driver. Try the other driver. If it loads, put the command into C:\NWSERVER\STARTUP.NCF.
Good luck.
Marvin Huffaker MCNE, CNE
Marvin Huffaker Consulting, Inc.
- Thread starter
- #3
Thankyou very much. After your suggestion I finally got the right drivers (what a pain). Then by miracles of miracles (this is a new server and I am just testing with it before I move it to production) I downloaded the NW 6.5 SP2 overlay CD's and tried the install with them. So far it is installing without a hitch, so my assumption is that even overlay 1b did not take into consideration the Dell PEDGE3.HAM file for this particular board. I am hopefull that this will load everything I have chosen in the products menu and after one more test load this server will become my master in the replica ring so I can retire one of the old 6.0 servers.
I had similar fun.
Seems the old PEDGE3.HAM runs all those chipsets.
George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge
Seems the old PEDGE3.HAM runs all those chipsets.
George Walkey
Senior Geek in charge
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