HP Smart Array CCISS driver

Here you will find source RPMs and source tarballs for the cciss driver for HP's Smart Array line of hardware RAID controllers. Most likely, you do not need these, as the cciss driver has been in the Linux kernel for a very long time, and most distributions will already have a cciss driver which will work for you as is.

From time to time there may be instances in which hardware or driver features are not supported by the cciss driver which comes with your distribution or kernel, because it is too old, or the hardware is too new, etc. In these instances you may wish to try the source RPMs or tarballs provided here.

If you are looking for binary RPMs or driver diskette images

We do not supply any binary RPMs from this page. HP does supply binary RPMs and driver diskettes (for loading drivers during OS installation) for supported Linux distributions on hp.com. See these search results from hp.com. You can use these if you have a supported distribution running a supported kernel.

Source RPMs:

You may try to use these to build a binary RPM.

To install, download the RPM file, and use

rpm -ihv rpmfile

This will deposit the cciss.spec file in /usr/src/redhat/SPECS, for instance on Redhat's distribution. (Your distribution may differ.) Change to this directory, and execute:

	cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
	rpmbuild -bb cciss.spec

This will create the binary RPM in, for instance, /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/`arch` directory. (Your distribution may differ.) This binary RPM may then be installed in the usual way, for instance:

	rpm -ihv cpq_cciss-2.6.14-7.ia64.rpm

Note: The binary RPMs produced by the source RPMs here are a greatly simplified version of the binary RPMs distributed by HP. The binary RPMs distributed by HP do many things like modifying grub configuration files or lilo.conf as needed, modifying /etc/modules.conf, etc. The binary RPMs created by the source RPMs here do not do these things, they only build the driver module and initrd image. It is up to you to make any changes to your grub or lilo configuration files and /etc/modules.conf (or modprobe.conf) files as needed.

Oct 4, 2007: Note: There has been a report that sometimes the OS supplied /sbin/mkinitrd script used by the RPM will get the wrong cciss.*.ko file out of /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/block and put it in the initrd image. So far, I haven't had any luck duplicating this problem.

Source DEBs:

Debian source package copies cciss files to /var/hp/storage/cciss directory and builds cciss module against installed kernel's source. It is required to have kernel source code available at /usr/src/linux-x.x.xx. If necessary, deb package will compile kernel as well.

To install, download Debian cciss source package (.deb file) and issue following command

prompt>dpkg -i hpcciss-src-x_x_xx.deb

This will copy cciss source files to /var/hp/storage/cciss directory and build cciss module binary against installed kernel. Newly built cciss driver will be placed under /var/hp/storage/cciss, if build is successful.

Note: Debian package is greatly simplified. It neither modifies bootloader (grub or lilo.conf) configuration files, nor modify /etc/modules.conf, nor build initrd. Debian package only builds binary cciss module. It is up to the user to make any changes to bootloader configuration files, /etc/modules.conf (or modprobe.conf) files and initrd as needed.

Source tarballs:

NOTICE: the source tarballs do not create a single parent directory, so it is up to you do so yourself.

To build the source tarballs:

1. Create a directory and unpack the tarball.

   	[scameron@quandary somedir]$ mkdir cciss-3.6.14
   	[scameron@quandary somedir]$ cd cciss-3.6.14
   	[scameron@quandary cciss-3.6.14]$ tar xzvf ../cciss-3.6.14.tar.gz
   	configure
   	Documentation/
   	Documentation/mkdev.cciss
   	Documentation/cciss.txt
   	Documentation/rmdev_dyn.cciss
   	Documentation/mkdev_dyn.cciss
   	drivers/
   	drivers/block/
   	drivers/block/cciss_cmd.h
   	drivers/block/cciss.h
   	drivers/block/cciss_scsi.c
   	drivers/block/cciss.c
   	drivers/block/cciss_scsi.h
   	drivers/block/Makefile
   	include/
   	include/linux/
   	include/linux/cciss_ioctl.h
   	INSTALL
   -->	MAKEFILE
   	Makefile_redhat
   	Makefile_suse
   -->	README
   	RELEASE
   	UNINSTALL
   

   The source tarballs are copies of what is used by the source RPMs. In fact, you could extract the source tarballs from the source RPMs by using rpm2cpio.
2. Read the README file for information about how the tarball is used in the source RPM.
3. Read MAKEFILE¹ for further instructions on building the driver from the tarball without any involvement of RPMs.

   ¹Yes, I know MAKEFILE is traditionally one of the names of files that the make command usually reads. In this case, it is just a text file, documentation, meant for human consumption.

Downloads

CCISS 4.6 tarballs CCISS 4.6 source rpms CCISS 4.6 source deb	Last updated Thu Oct 29, 2009 latest version is 4.6.20-22 These are meant for 2.6.26 or later kernels (typically, SuSE SLES11, etc.)
CCISS 3.6 source RPMs CCISS 3.6 source tarballs CCISS 3.6 kdump source RPMs CCISS 3.6 kdump source tarballs	Use these for systems using 2.6 kernels later than about 2.6.15. From 2.6.11 to 2.6.15 is kind of a gray area during which some kernel interfaces the driver relies upon were in flux. Last updated Fri Oct 18, 2009 latest version is 3.6.20-20 Changes since 3.6.20-16: TBD. Changes since 3.6.18-17: Fixed bug where deleting logical volumes could hang the system. Fixed a memory leak in rebuild_lun_table code. Fixed a panic that could arise during an insmod and rmmod of the cciss driver. Fix procfs regression. This patch will get called only once for each controller. The earlier fix would be called anytime something changed. Fixed wrong usage of a pointer for sysfs symlink. Fix firmware version not being printed in procfs. Fixed sysfs link issue. Added check_unit_attention() to catch UA's on MSA2000. The function prints a message then retries the command that returned with a unit attention. Fixed a bug found by the L1 test suite. The system would panic when deleting many logical volumes at one time. Removed unneeded lock in sysfs code. Updated rebuild_lun_table to avoid pulling a logical volume out from under acuxe or hpacucli. Cleaned up code for adding and removing logical volumes. Mkinitrd has changed on rhel5u1 and higher systems. It can no longer find the rhel5 base media cciss driver following an uninstalled of an HP cciss rpm. Without this fix the system will panic on reboot when the HP cciss rpm has been uninstalled. Fixed race condition that could show up during driver init. Fixed "out of memory" error introduced in the 2.6.20-4 aand 3.6.20-4 drivers Added 1024 lun support. OS distros with warnings. Added a procfs interface so users can tell the driver to rescan our devices. Needed for MSA2012 support since MSA2012 does not report configuration changes back to the driver. Added dynamic outstanding command turning on a per controller basis.
CCISS 2.6 source RPMs CCISS 2.6 source tarballs	Use these for 2.6 kernel up to about 2.6.11. RHEL 4.x and SLES 9.x are examples of systems based upon such kernels. From kernels 2.6.11 to 2.6.15 is kind of a gray area during which some kernel interfaces the driver relies upon were in flux. Last updated Tue Oct 16, 2009 latest version is 2.6.20-23 Changes since 2.6.20-16 TBD. Changes since 2.6.18-16 Fixed bug where deleting logical volumes could hang the system. Fixed issue where ACU would hang after several operations. Fixed a panic that could arise during an insmod and rmmod of the cciss driver. Changed kzalloc back to kmalloc + memset to continue support for older OS version. Fix procfs regression. This patch will get called only once for each controller. The earlier fix would be called anytime something changed. Fixed wrong usage of a pointer for sysfs symlink. Fix firmware version not being printed in procfs. Fixed issue where controllers that had no configured volumes did not show up in the OS. Fixed sysfs link issue. Added check_unit_attention() to catch UA's on MSA2000. The function prints a message then retries the command that returned with a unit attention. Updated rebuild_lun_table to avoid pulling a logical volume out from under acuxe or hpacucli. Cleaned up code for adding and removing logical volumes. Fixed race condition that could show up during driver init. Fixed "out of memory" error introduced in the 2.6.20-4 aand 3.6.20-4 drivers Added 1024 lun support. Added dynamic outstanding command turning on a per controller basis.
CCISS 2.4 source RPMs CCISS_2.4 source tarballs	Use these for 2.4 based kernels, such as RHEL 3.x, SLES 8 or (SuSE) United Linux 1.0. These won't work with very old kernels such as the 2.4.7 series used by SLES 7.0, etc.

BTW, if you happen across a 2.6.12 version of the cciss driver, or patches to bring the driver up to 2.6.12, don't use them as this version will hang. (You'll find out soon enough if you do try to use it.) There are newer versions. Use those instead.