On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 22:27 +0100, Marcin Giedz wrote: > I've got EMC disk array which recently I was able to connect using > QLogic FC card to my server. However I can only use one PATH from my > server to EMC so natural failover which comes with EMC can't be > achieved. EMC AX 150 has 2 FC controllers where every contains 2 FC > channel. So basically I could use 2 servers connected directly to two > different controllers or even use SAN but.... not with Debian :( > > EMC has PowerPath software but it's binary version including kernel > modules - which is the BIGGEST problem I found. They are compiled for > RHEL or SUSE so can't be used on others distros. But ... this idea came > to my mind today and I what to ask you if this is possible at all?
It is possible to convert RPM packages to DEB with the alien(1) tool, though the resulting package is fairly basic, in particular dependencies are only supported for LSB packages (i.e. not for RPMs). Further the manual page warns that: "In general, if you can’t remove a package without breaking your system, don’t try to replace it with an alien version." Your mileage may vary. Alternatively if you *could* find the source somewhere (and for a package of the kernel proper you *should* be able to) then you could use the make-kpkg(1) utility (from the kernel-package package) to produce your own debian package that's very nicely integrated into the rest of the system (including the wonderful module-assistant(8) framework) and then simply load the binary only modules later (and even make a simple debian package for them). > Can I build/create debian-installer based on redhat kernel which is > dedicated for EMC PowerPath? I mean .... I'd like to use BINARY version > of this kernel with all external modules which come with EMC and prepare > debian-installer with such kernel. I've never had to look at it myself but, my understanding is that the new debian installer is easily extensible through udeb (simplified) packages, the debian-installer package apparently contains more information... > Has anyone tried something like this ever? The closest I've come to this is netbooting a Cobalt RaQ server with the official Cobalt/Red Hat system image and then using this environment to debootstrap a debian installation on to it... This might be simpler in your case than trying to create your own modified installer image (which seems a little extreme to me). So long as you can get a basic shell environment on the machine (from an install cd or nfs image), then debootstrap(8) will give you a minimal debian installation. Then before you reboot, simply install your kernel and modules, either from rpms using alien or your own custom debs, though that would require a much more complete environment than debootstrap would give you (i.e. at least build-essential and kernel-package). I hope some of that helps. Daniel -- "We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in five seconds" (attributed to Linus Torvalds) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
