Topic: SME 7.1 install on a Dell 2450 Poweredge

[irish_lad]

I am really a newbie on server installs (AKA know almost nothing) & I'm trying to learn by installing SME 7.1 on this particular Dell server. I am following the install directions using Nero Express to create a boot CD & an ISO image of SME 7.1 on another CD. I can get the Dell to boot off the boot CD (to DR-DOS) but cannot get the SME 7.1 to start when I insert that CD. I have also tried it w/ a combo boot & SME 7.1 CD but only get as far as the boot. Any idea what I'm doing wrong here? Thanks.

[MJB]

I am following the install directions using Nero Express to create a boot CD & an ISO image of SME 7.1 on another CD.

Hmmm, I simply burned the SME 7.1 ISO image to a CD-R and booted off that disc. Have you tried that? I don't think that a separate boot disc is necessary.

What type of hard drive(s) does your Dell have:  IDE, SATA, SCSI?

If your Dell has 2 or more hard drives, do not enable RAID in the BIOS. SME Server creates a software RAID during installation. If you have a hardware RAID controller, check that it's supported.

Are you getting any error messages, or does the boot process just stall?

[irish_lad]

Boy I wished it was that easy for me. I have tried that but the message when the boot stalls is: "No boot device available-strike F1 to try reboot, F2 for setup utility"

There are 4 - 36 GB SCSI drives.

There are SCSI/RAID setup utilities (using ctrl-A & ctrl-M) during the boot process but I'm not exactly sure how to disable RAID in these utilities.

BTW my SCSI controller is Adaptec 7899 Bios V25306 & the RAID controller is PowerEdge Expandable Bios 3.35

[shell]

mjb is right, you should be booting from the sme disc - ie you do only need a single disc to install sme.  

if you have burnt the .iso file onto a cd as a 'data' disc it will just be a single file on the cd and won't have any boot information.  you will need to burn another disc.

you should be choosing to burn a "disc image or saved project" - this is the exact terminolgoy available on nero express 6.

this will allow you to browse to the smeserver7 iso.  
(.iso is one of the supprted image file types)

essentially the iso is an image file of the entire smeserver install disc, and when burnt onto a cd it is unpacked and the sme7 disc now has all the required files in the correct file structure.

it sounds like your bios boot settings are fine (as you are booting to another cd on startup).

this won't be anything to do with your hard-drive setup because this is prior to sme looking at your drives.  that will be the next step.

[irish_lad]

Thanks so far for all the help to those who have posted.

In my previous post I had said that the boot stalls at "No boot device available-strike F1 to try reboot, F2 for setup utility". I went through the BIOS settings & it looks like when I had been poking around for a way to turn off my RAID controller that I had inadvertently turned off the IDE which is why I got the message above. I enabled the IDE & now when I stick a full SME 7.1 server ISO image (created as explained in the last post using Nero Express) I get the boot stopping at the message "Isolinux 3.20 2006-08-06 Copyright (c) 1994-2005 H. Peter Anvin".

Does this sound like I'm making progress?? Any idea why this message would show up &/or why it freezes the boot at this point?

[MJB]

I did a little digging on Google and came up with this message posting:

I too have a Dell PowerEdge 2450 with the Dell PERC3/si RAID controller.  I have had Linux running on it for a few months and it currently has an uptime of 115 days.

Even though the PERC3/si controller appears to be Adaptec-based, the only Linux path forward is to pick up a binary-only driver from Dell.  It's set up to work under Red Hat, so that's the way you'd better go if you want an easy time of it.

http://www.ale.org/archive/ale/ale-2001-02/msg00349.html

It appears that SME Server might not have built-in support for your SCSI RAID controller. That would explain why the installation program stalls after boot-up. Here's what I found on Dell's support site:

PowerEdge 2450 / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 / English

http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/devices.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&SystemID=PWE_PNT_P3C_2450&os=LIN4&osl=EN

SCSI RAID Controllers
* Adaptec PERC2
* Adaptec PERC3/Si
* American Megatrends (AMI) PERC
* American Megatrends (AMI) PERC2/DC
* American Megatrends (AMI) PERC2/SC
* Dell Elite Hard Drive Diagnostics
* LSI Logic PERC 4/DC
* LSI Logic PERC 4/Di
* LSI Logic PERC 4/SC
* LSI Logic PERC 4e/DC
* LSI Logic PERC 4e/Di
* LSI Logic PERC 4e/Si
* LSI Logic PERC3/DC
* LSI Logic PERC3/DCL
* LSI Logic PERC3/QC
* LSI Logic PERC3/SC

I have no idea which controller is in your particular machine. You'll have to dig into the hardware and identify it. Dell appears to have compatible drivers for the cards (SME Server is based on CentOS, a non-commercial rendition of Red Hat Enterprise Linux). Unfortunately, I have no idea how to get SME Server to load a controller driver during installation. Sorry.

[ddomoney]

Irish_lad,

The reason you are unable to progress is that your disks are in all likelihood connected to the raid adapter and are unconfigured - SME sees no installable disk.

When you see the control+M prompt (MegaRaid config utility) press the keys. This should take you into the raid configuration utility. The easiest thing to do this now is to select clear configuration - this clears any previous raid setup. Next you should be able to select easy configuration (like raid for dummies that does a standard best config). Save the settings.

The last step is to initialize the array - after this you can exit and SME should see a new installable harddisk.

Let me know if you need any more help.

Darrin

[MJB]

If you want to see a good explanation of the different RAID configurations, check this out:

RAID Tutorial & Benchmarking Tools
http://www.acnc.com/04_00.html

[irish_lad]

I went into the RAID config (using ctrl-M) & did the clear config, easy config (& save settings) & then initialization; I used only 1 SCSI drive & assigned that to be logical 0 drive & also set this as the boot drive.

Upon reboot, it did recognize the drive with the following messages:

"1 Logical Drive Found on Host Adapter"
"1 Logical Drive Handled by BIOS"
(before it had displayed 0 logical drive)

The message displayed directly after this (with the SME 7.1 server ISO image in the CD drive) was as before:

"Isolinux 3.20 2006-08-06      Copyright (c) 1994-2005 H. Peter Anvin"

This is the message displayed in the SCSI config utility (ctrl-A) for the SCSI controller:

"HA-0 (Bus 2 Dev 0) PERC 3/DC Standard FW 198u DRAM=128 MB"

Does it look like I have to load the Dell SCSI Linux driver? Anybody know how to do this?

BTW thanks for link to the RAID tutorial (it was very informative).

[ddomoney]

Irish_lad,

The Dell Perc3/DC is just a rebranded AMI megaraid controller. These are great controllers as the drivers are normally incorporated into the Centos 4 / Linux 2.6x kernel - this means that you should not have to intervene at all. SME should boot - just let it go and it should detect the drive created in your Raid array and allow you to partition / format / load as though it was any old disk.

Darrin

[irish_lad]

Darrin:

I have tried several times just letting the SME 7.1 Iso disk continue to boot but it always gets stuck at the following message:

"Isolinux 3.20 2006-08-06 Copyright (c) 1994-2005 H. Peter Anvin"

I'm sure this is from the SME 7.1 Iso disk but I'm not sure why the boot stops at this message. The only thing you can do after this is ctrl-alt-del to reboot.

What could I do to get past this step in the boot?

[irish_lad]

What could I do next to troubleshoot this problem? IS this a Dell problem or a SME server software problem? What is hanging in the normal boot process of this Dell that is preventing the SME server software from running??

Thanks in advance.

[chebe]

You need to get the driver for your scsi card on a separate disk, then boot on your CD and instead of pressing enter (or letting it boot on its own), type : sme dd.
It will then prompt you to insert the driver disk. and here comes the problem, the drivers you will find fot Red Hat EL 4 update 4 will be for kernel 2.6.9-42.0.10, and the SME 7.1 is shipped with 2.6.9-42.0.3, so you're stuck just like I am, you have to find a way to build an iso of the SME 7.1.2 ...
see my post here

[ddomoney]

Irish lad,

Sorry for the long delay but I wanted to pull a Dell Poweredge into my office for some R&D and haven't had a chance before yesterday. I think the problem you are having is related to the mode that your Raid adapter is running in. Centos doesn't seem to support the I2O mode of the Perc cards; they must be running in Mass Storage mode.

To change the mode that your card is running in press CTRL+M on boot - this gets you into the raid adapter's bios. Next in the list of items select adapter. This will give you access to the adapter settings - make sure the adapter is set as mass storage. Save the configuration, reboot and go.

Good Luck,
Darrin