[Hampshire] Monitoring Hardware RAID Controllers from Linux

I am trying to monitor hardware RAID (specifically, RAID 1) on a Dell
PowerEdge SC1430. Basically, for many reasons, we want to use Hardware RAID
rather than Linux software raid. Since the server will be safely stored
away and not near an admin who can listen to loud beeps we want some way
for the system to moan when a disk dies. So basically we want Linux to be
able to monitor the hardware raid controller and notice when a disk dies.

We purchased a Dell PERC 5/iR SAS RAID controller (the manual suggests the
controller under the surface is an LSI SAS 1068) to do this. Debian is
using the megaraid_sas kernel module and finds the mirror just fine. We've
tried using Dell OMSA (Open Manage Server Administrator) which is designed
for RHEL but works on Debian, apparently. It however, fails to work:

core:~# apt-get -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up dellomsa (5.2.0-2) ...
Checking that /etc/ld.so.conf contains required paths...
ln: creating symbolic link `/etc/delloma.d/srvadmin' to
`/opt/dell/srvadmin': File exists
ln: creating symbolic link `/usr/sbin/omconfig' to
`/opt/dell/srvadmin/oma/bin/omconfig': File exists
ln: creating symbolic link `/usr/sbin/omexec' to
`/opt/dell/srvadmin/oma/bin/omexec': File exists
ln: creating symbolic link `/usr/sbin/omhelp' to
`/opt/dell/srvadmin/oma/bin/omhelp': File exists
ln: creating symbolic link `/usr/sbin/omreport' to
`/opt/dell/srvadmin/oma/bin/omreport': File exists
ln: creating symbolic link `/usr/sbin/omupdate' to
`/opt/dell/srvadmin/oma/bin/omupdate': File exists
Loading kernel modules
Starting Systems Management Device Drivers:
Starting ipmi driver: *
Starting dataengine
Starting Systems Management Device Drivers:
Starting ipmi driver: *
dpkg: error processing dellomsa (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
dellomsa
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I've noticed that /etc/init.d/dsm_sa_ipmi seems to be being called to start
the ipmi driver, and fails. dmesg reports:

ipmi message handler version 39.0
IPMI System Interface driver.
ipmi_si: Unable to find any System Interface(s)

We are using the very latest Dell PERC 5/iR controller and Dell has a habit
of changing the controllers, so it is possible the new card simply isn't
supported under the OMSA packaged for Debian (which isn't in Debian, it's
in another repository). Anybody had any experience with the Dell PERC
5-series stuff?

My other question which I'm hoping might get a good response is does
anybody have any experience with any hardware raid card (SATA or SAS) that
has good support for monitoring the status of the RAID array under Linux
(preferably Debian!).

Cheers