Dell2950 & new hardware policy

[Sébastien Estienne]

Calvin Browne a écrit :
> Hi All
> 
> Just got delivery of two shiny Dell 2950's with 'PERC 5I INTG SAS RAID
> CARD' and Broadcom NIC's. Naturally, I want to install Dapper (who
> wouldn't).
> 
> Unfortunately - it seems you guys have problems supporting hardware that
> is not yet shipping at release time ;-)
> 
> Anyways, here's what has happened so far:
> 
> tried the amd64 server image - hangs at reboot, NIC's not recognised
> (apparently need bnx2 drivers/modules).
> ditto for the i386 server image image.
> desktop install works and reboots but then grub doesn't boot - seems the
> megaraid_sas driver needs to be included (see
> http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2006-August/026792.html)
> hints on how to do that would be appreciated.

i think you can do this:
echo megaraid_sas >> /etc/mkinitramfs/modules
dpkg-reconfigure linux-image-2.6.15-your_specific_version

maybe you can do the same for the bnx2, but i don't think it needs to be 
in the initramfs.
If it doesn't load automatically at boot time, you can add it to 
/etc/modules

I read in some forum that sometimes the network device enumeration order 
can change for some reasons, if it's your case, you cause /etc/iftab to 
assign a fixed name to your ifaces.

I'll receive my 2950 to test all of this today, but i won't be able to 
test the ubuntu installer as i'm using FAI to install my servers.

> 
> I'm busy downloading the latest firmware iso images from dell support,
> along with alternate-amd64 iso image to give that a bash and see how it
> goes.
> 
> Now my actual questions:
> How could I include the bnx2 drivers?
> How would one go about creating an image for Dapper that would work on
> the 2950, and even get it contributed back to Dapper in some kind of
> (semi-)official way?
> Does the server project have a policy/mechanism for adding support for
> new hardware, particularly in the light of the LTS commitment?
> Would it help paying Canonical for any of the above?

I'm also interesting in answers about these question.
Will these issues be fixed in Dapper?
I guess that more and more people will have these issues because these 
Dell servers are quite popular and these issues are present on almost 
all new dell servers : 1950 /1955 /2950 and i guess all servers using 
megaraid_sas and bnx2.

Maybe in dapper 6.06.2 ?

> 
> TIA
> 
> regards
> 
> --Calvin
> 
>