How to install MegaCli command on physical Ubuntu and Debian Linux servers

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on January 17th 2024 - Listed in Hardware Linux

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To manage MegaRaid hardware RAID (storage) controllers from LSI (now acquired by Broadcom), the MegaCli command can be used (in most cases). This also applies to PERC (DELL's Power Edge RAID Controller), at least until ~2022 when PERC v8 was released (use PercCli for these).

There are two ways to install the megacli command on a physical Ubuntu or Debian server: Manually and through the HWraid repositories.

Manual MegaCli installation

MegaCli itself can be downloaded from the Broadcom website and installed on your physical Ubuntu server. The ZIP file (8-07-14_MegaCli.zip) contains a Linux directory in which resides a RPM package:

Hold on! RPM on Ubuntu/Debian? Are you kidding me?! 

Well, unfortunately Broadcom itself only offers a RPM for the MegaCli installation on Linux. However Broadcom mentions in their documentation to use the alien command to "translate" the RPM package into a DEB package.

ck@mint /tmp $ unzip 8-07-14_MegaCLI.zip
Archive:  8-07-14_MegaCLI.zip
  inflating: 8.07.14_MegaCLI.txt     
  inflating: DOS/MegaCLI.exe         
 extracting: FreeBSD/MegaCLI.zip     
 extracting: FreeBSD/MegaCli64.zip   
  inflating: Linux/MegaCli-8.07.14-1.noarch.rpm  
  inflating: Solaris/MegaCli.pkg     
  inflating: Windows/MegaCli.exe     
  inflating: Windows/MegaCli64.exe 

Now we can use alien to create a deb package (install the alien command using sudo apt install alien):

ck@mint /tmp $ cd Linux/
ck@mint /tmp/Linux $ sudo alien -k --scripts MegaCli-8.07.14-1.noarch.rpm
megacli_8.07.14-1_all.deb generated

And the resulting deb package can be installed with dpkg:

ck@mint /tmp/Linux $ sudo dpkg -i megacli_8.07.14-1_all.deb
Selecting previously unselected package megacli.
(Reading database ... 544504 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack megacli_8.07.14-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking megacli (8.07.14-1) ...
Setting up megacli (8.07.14-1) ...

The megacli command can now be found under /opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64:

ck@mint ~ $ /opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64 -h

      MegaCLI SAS RAID Management Tool  Ver 8.07.14 Dec 16, 2013

    (c)Copyright 2013, LSI Corporation, All Rights Reserved.

[...]

But there's a much easier method to install MegaCli: Using an existing APT repository built for this purpose (see below)!

MegaCli installation through HWraid repository

The HWraid repository contains all kinds of programs and commands for physical servers (and also a very helpful Wiki).

megacli is just one of these packages, many more commands for other storage controllers are also packaged and available to install with apt.

Even better, the repository still supports meanwhile EOL versions, such as Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial) or Debian 9 (Stretch).

Ubuntu Linux

For Ubuntu machines, add the APT key and add the repository:

ck@ubuntu ~ $ DIST=$(lsb_release -c | grep "Codename:" | awk '{print $2}')
wget -O - https://hwraid.le-vert.net/ubuntu/hwraid.le-vert.net.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://hwraid.le-vert.net/ubuntu $DIST main " | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hwraid.list

Then update APT and install the megacli package:

ck@ubuntu ~ $ apt-get update
ck@ubuntu ~ $ apt-get install megacli

Debian Linux

The exact same steps are needed for a Debian Linux, however the URL path points to /debian instead of /ubuntu:

ck@debian ~ $ DIST=$(lsb_release -c | grep "Codename:" | awk '{print $2}')
wget -O - https://hwraid.le-vert.net/debian/hwraid.le-vert.net.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://hwraid.le-vert.net/debian $DIST main " | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hwraid.list

Then update APT and install the megacli package:

ck@debian ~ $ apt-get update
ck@debian ~ $ apt-get install megacli

The megacli command can now be executed:

root@ubuntu:~# megacli -h

      MegaCLI SAS RAID Management Tool  Ver 8.07.14 Dec 16, 2013

    (c)Copyright 2013, LSI Corporation, All Rights Reserved.

[...]

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