Installing Adaptec Storage Manager on Ubuntu 10.x +

I use Adaptec (More specifically, the Adaptec 5805) RAID cards on a daily basis. Apart from the long(ish) boot times, they perform great once booted up and I’d recommend the cards any day. I also use Ubuntu predominantly as a server OS, so in order to manage my arrays, I need to be able to use the Adaptec Storage Manager (ASM for short). Unfortunately, Ubuntu is NOT officially supported, so you need to do a little workaround to get it to work.

**Note – This was tested on Ubuntu Desktop 10.10 64-Bit

Step 1 : Download the ASM software from the adaptec website. You ‘should’ be able to get it at this link.

Step 2 : Update your Ubuntu sources to the latest editions and install ‘alien’. ‘Alien’ is a utility to convert RPM install files to .deb files.

#update sources
sudo apt-get update
 
#install alien (answer 'y' to any prompts)
sudo apt-get install alien

Step 3 : Extract the ASM download (from step 1) in a directory on your server. ‘/var/tmp’ is used in this sample

#go to the directory where you downloaded the file in 'Step 1'
cd /var/tmp
 
#extract the tar archive
sudo tar -zxvf asm_linux_x64_v7_xx_xxxxx.tgz

Step 4 : Create a .deb file from the extracted RPM

#Go into the 'manager' folder. Remember, in this sample my tar archive was downloaded to '/var/tmp'
cd /var/tmp/manager
 
#issue the following command
sudo alien StorMan-7.00.x86_64.rpm

You should get a message stating that the conversion was done successfully

Step 5 : Install the .deb package created above

sudo dpkg -i storman_7.00-18782_amd64.deb

You should now be able to run the ASM using the following command (You must do this as the Super User). The agent will start automatically during the install

#start Adaptec Storage Manager
sudo /usr/StorMan/Storman.sh

How the ASM works is beyong the scope of this howto, but if you have questions, feel free to ask.