Installer does not detect Highpoint RocketRAID 1810 or 1820 controller

Problem:

The SuSE 9.3 installer does not detect the Highpoint RocketRAID 1810 or 1820 controller.

Details:

No mainstream Linux currently ships with a driver for this controller.

Solution:

ASL provides a driver disk and source rpm for the Rocket RAID controller. To re-install the system, please follow these instructions:

  1. Create the Highpoint Rocket RAID driver floppy from the ASL Driver CD 
          mount /media/cdrecorder
      dd if=/media/cdrecorder/SuSE/9.3/x86_64/rocketraid-1.12-2.6.11.4-20a.img of=/dev/fd0
      umount /media/cdrecorder
  2. Boot the system from the SuSE 9.3 installation DVD
  3. At the installation menu, press F5 to use an driver disk
  4. Select installation from the menu
  5. When prompted, insert the driver floppy
  6. When asked to select the driver update medium, choose "fd0: floppy"
  7. There installer should print "Driver Update OK"
  8. Select back to continue the installation

If an online update is performed, the kernel will be upgraded by default. Before rebooting into the new kernel, the Rocket RAID driver must be rebuilt. Failure to perform this step will result in an unbootable system: 

# mount /media/cdrecorder
# rpm -ivh /media/cdrecorder/SuSE/9.3/rocketraid-1.12-2.6.11.4-20a.src.rpm
# cd /usr/src/packages/SPECS
# /media/cdrecorder/SuSE/9.3/suse93driver.sh rocketraid.spec 
# rpm -ivh ../RPMS/x86_64/rocketraid*.rpm --force

Note: For systems with a DVD recorder, replace 'cdrecorder' with 'dvdrecorder'