Month: March 2012

Bash script to download, build and install gcc 4.6.3 and boost 1.49

I recently had to build gcc 4.6.3 on CentOS 5.5 so I put together this script to do all of the work. It is released in text mode so that you can cut-n-paste it from the web page. The shell version is also available: http://projects.joelinoff.com/gcc-4.6.3/bld.sh if you want to download it directly using a tool like wget.

The full installation of gcc-4.6.3 and boost-1.49 requires about 4GB of disk space. After the build is complete you can delete the archives, bld and src directory trees to reclaim about 3.4GB of disk space.
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OpenIndiana 151a NIC Aggregation

My colleagues and I recently built a filer using OI 151a/ZFS and wanted to increase the throughput by aggregating multiple NICs to a common IP address that is dedicated for data. We did it by physically adding a card with 4 NICs, aggregating the ports on server and then updating the switch to enable link aggregation (port trunking) on the 2 connections.
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RAID Configuration Analysis Tool in Python

I have written a RAID configuration analysis tool to help me configure filers. It reports the mean time to data loss (MTTDL), the amount of storage available in a JBOD, the number of possible spares and a other useful information. I am releasing it on the hope that other folks that are trying to figure out how many disks to bundle in a RAID configuration (vdev) will find it useful.

Download

File Size Checksum Version Type
raid.py 23K 60577 27 1.2 Python source code

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Bootable USB to Flash IT Mode for LSI SAS 9211-8i and 9200-8e Controllers

I have created a FreeDOS 1.1 bootable USB that allows you to flash IT mode for LSI SAS 92100-8i and 9200-8e controllers.

To use it, download the lsifw.img archive, unpack it and flash to your USB. Then flash the controller using the LSI\SAS\9211_8i\flash.bat file or the LSI\SAS\9200_8e\flash.bat file.

Downloads

File Size Sum Unpack Command
lsifw.tar.bz2 29M 55925 29689 tar jxf lsifw.tar.bz2
lsifw.zip 34M 42642 34190 unzip lsifw.tar.bz2

On linux you can flash it to your USB using this command:
    dd if=lsifw.img of=/dev/ bs=1M.

I used it to flash the SAS/SATA controller on a Dell PowerEdge R610 that is used as the head server for a ZFS filer that I am building with a colleague because I wanted to upgrade to a newer version of the firmware.

The flash.bat script assumes that the sasaddhi address is 500605B so before executing it, run sas2flsh -o -listsasadd as specified in the readme.txt file. If the address is different, edit the flash.bat file and insert the new address.

Here is what the flash.bat file looks like for the 9211-8i controller:

Here are the basic steps.
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USB Image for SuperMicro SAS Firmware Updates

I have created a USB image for SuperMicro SAS firmware updates to help me with converting SAS controllers to I/T (Initiator/Target) mode instead of the default IR (Integrated RAID) mode. This USB contains all of the SAS firmware downloads available from SuperMicro.

See this post for details about how to flash a USB.

Downloads

URL Format Size Checksum Extraction
flshfw10.tar.bz2 tar, gzip 68MB 39222 69242 tar jvxf flshfw10.tar.bz2
flshfw10.tar.gz tar, bzip2 72MB 39754 73500 tar zvxf flshfw10.tar.gz
flshfw10.zip zip 72MB 10292 73497 unzip flshfw10.zip

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FreeDOS 1.1 Bootable USB Image

Here is the FreeDOS image file. It can be used to create a bootable USB. At the end of this post I describe, in detail, how I created the image file from the FreeDOS ISO.

1 Download

Here are the download options.

URL Format Size Checksum Extraction
fdos11.tar.bz2 tar, gzip 28MB 25175 27686 tar jvxf fdos11.tar.bz2
fdos11.tar.gz tar, bzip2 32MB 25477 32340 tar zvxf fdos11.tar.gz
fdos11.zip zip 32MB 28567 32337 unzip fdos11.zip

Once you have downloaded and unzipped it, you need to flash it to your USB.
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