install and monitoring Dell PowerVault MD Series Storage Array Resource on ubuntu debian linux

I cannot renounce to use my ubuntu machine even in the data center so today after the Dell technicians told me to convert to at least a windows VM I took few min to check what was wrong with ubuntu and their SMclient and several other softwares.

We got some powervaults and some MD storage. To configure them you need to install the management software.  Like always the software is only supported on Windows, Redhat Enterprise Linux or Suse enterprise Linux.  The management software is in fact written in Java.

After running the DELL installer you'll find a partial installation caused by their rpm-only packaging so I decided to use alien and check if everything was compatible with my ubuntu laptop

Here the steps needed in a nutshell to make the software work on debian distros:

• Download the cdrom with the powervault software from the Dell support site.
• Mount the iso file
  mount -o loop Dell_MDxx.iso /mnt
• Copy 'linux/mdsm/SMIA-LINUXX64.bin' to the machine where you will build your Debian packages.
• Execute the bin file.
•  chmod +x ./SMIA-LINUXX64.bin 
  
./SMIA-LINUX.bin -i console

Note that, if you are on a remote machine and if you enabled X forwarding when you did the SSH the installer will start a graphical installer, even with the '-i' option...
• Answer the questions, but don't install in the default location. E.g. choose '/opt/dell_installer/mdstoragemanager'.  Also install the full bundle: Typical (Full Installation) installation
• In '/opt/dell_installer/mdstoragemanager’ you will find several rpm files: SMagent.rpm, SMclient.rpm, SMruntime.rpm, SMutil.rpm.
• install Alien rpm converter + apt-get install x11-utils xauth
• Use alien to unpack the rpm packages. SMclient.rpm is an architecture independent rpm. Because some of the package are 32bit and I'm running on a 64 bit system I can't directly convert to a deb package.  Also, the files in the rpms have some problems we need to fix them before creating the deb package.
• Conversion of SMclient.rpm to debian package using sed commands to change the package name to 'package-dell' (this is just to avoid clash in case we will use IBM software as well).  The software also uses 'source < file>' wich will not work on Debian. The scripts say they are using '/bin/sh'.  We also would need to install the 32bit java of sun because the jar files in Smutil and SMagent depend on 32bit java.  

NOTE If you only install SMclient you can get away with 'openjdk-6-jre'.  

alien -g SMclient.rpm

cd SMclient-10.75.G6.16

echo "BASEDIR=/opt/dell/mdstoragemanager" > /var/opt/SM/LAUNCHER_ENV

sed -i 's,sh,bash,' opt/dell/mdstoragemanager/client/SMclient

sed -i 's,^source,.,' opt/dell/mdstoragemanager/client/SMclient opt/dell/mdstoragemanager/client/SMcli opt/dell/mdstoragemanager/client/SMmonitor

(optional) sed -i 's,smclient$,smclient-dell,' debian/control

sed -i 's|Depends.*|Depends: x11-utils, xauth|' debian/control

(optional) sed -i 's,^smclient,smclient-dell,' debian/changelog

ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/<java version>/jre opt/dell/mdstoragemanager/jre

dpkg-buildpackage -b

• Conversion of SMutil.rpm to debian package
  

alien -g SMutil.rpm

cd SMutil-10.01.A6.04

sed -i 's,^source,.,' opt/dell/mdstoragemanager/util/SMdevices

sed -i 's,smutil$,smutil-dell,' debian/control

sed -i 's|Depends.*|Depends: ia32-sun-java6-bin|' debian/control

sed -i 's,^smutil,smutil-dell,' debian/changelog

sed -i 's,^Architecture: i386,Architecture: amd64,' debian/control

• Conversion of SMagent.rpm to debian package
  alien -g SMagent.rpm
cd SMagent-10.02.A6.09
sed -i 's,^source,.,' opt/dell/mdstoragemanager/agent/SMagent
sed -i 's,smagent$,smagent-dell,' debian/control
sed -i 's|Depends.*|Depends: ia32-sun-java6-bin|' debian/control
sed -i 's,^smagent,smagent-dell,' debian/changelog
sed -i 's,^Architecture: i386,Architecture: amd64,' debian/control
dpkg-buildpackage -b


When you've built the deb package you can just install them with dpkg -i.  To start Smclient do the following

 /opt/dell/mdstoragemanager/client/SMclient

based on http://ed.zehome.com/blog/baie-de-disque-dell-md3200-sous-debian-gnulinux and http://blog.webworm.org/

thanks 

enjoy the DELL mon on debian

 Alex Barchiesi