Gentoo + QLogic's FC HBA Driver

I wanted to use QLogic's FC HBA driver with my Sun StorageTek 6140 disk array on my Gentoo Linux machine, but their driver doesn't seem to be compatible with newer kernels (eg, 2.6.28).

Why use QLogic's proprietary FC HBA driver and not use the open source version included with your kernel? QLogic's driver has MPIO built-in, so no need to use multipath-tools or another MPIO solution. I only see one SCSI device node in /dev per volume. I also like that the firmware image is include in the kernel module, no need for the hotplug framework to load module firmware (binary blob). There is probably a way to "embed" the firmware image into the open source qla2xxx kernel module too, but I haven't researched it.

I hacked the crap out of this driver to make it work on Gentoo and I'll be honest, I'm quite surprised it even works. So, I definitely would not recommend using this driver for production, although I haven't had any problems running in on my machine (yet).

Compiling/installing QLogic's FC HBA (QLE2462 for me) driver on 2.6.28-gentoo-r5:

Get the package from QLogic's web site (qla2xxx-v8.02.23_4-dist.tgz).
tar xvfz qla2xxx-v8.02.23_4-dist.tgz
cd qlogic
./drvrsetup
cd qla2xxx-8.02.23
wget http://longfellow.mcc.edu/~marc.smith/marcitland/qla2xxx-8.02.23.patch
patch -p0 < qla2xxx-8.02.23.patch
extras/build.sh
extras/build.sh install

After the module is installed, a simple 'modprobe qla2xxx' should do the trick. I created an initrd image for my kernel and I can now boot from my SAN.

Google Chrome

I love it! My boss showed me Chrome last fall, and I thought great, another browser. Almost a year later and I don't think I could live without it! Its not even beta yet! Well, the Linux port I mean. It runs great, and its not even beta yet (did I mention that)?

Anyhow, I'm running Gentoo/i386, and I use the chromium-bin ebuild in portage to keep up-to-date. Lots of things have improved, however, I still don't have the PDF plugin (Adobe) working correctly. It just opens to a dark grey screen when I click on a PDF. I see this is already reported and open, so I'm waiting on that: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=19587

My Java applets haven't been working for a while, and I seen the issue was closed involving Java + Chromium: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=16787

It has status fixed, and I never really thought to investigate until today; I just realized it says right in the bug report what needs to be done: Use libnpjp2.so (not libjavaplugin_oji.so).

I guess this is the "new" Java 2 plugin?

So, on my Gentoo machine, to fix it:

rm /usr/lib/nsbrowser/plugins/javaplugin.so

ln -s /usr/share/java-config-2/nsplugin/sun-jdk-1.6-plugin2-javaplugin.so /usr/lib/nsbrowser/plugins/javaplugin.so

Again, that worked for me, your JRE/JDK versions/paths may be different. That also may not be the most elegant way to fix it; I also assume that Gentoo will start using libnpjp2.so by default at some point. Maybe its already that way in current Gentoo? I haven't sync'd / updated in a few weeks.

I did find the "correct" Gentoo way to change the plugin: eselect java-nsplugin set sun-jdk-1.6-plugin2

My First Post

Yay! I have a blog! I never thought I would really get one of these things...

During my short career as an SA, I have come to appreciate the Internet, Google, and all of the information that is available out there to help someone like me. I'd like to give something back; this will be a place for me to post my experiences, tips, tricks, or whatever that deals with computing/IT.

Enjoy!