Topic: Mainboard for sme8

[geoff]

The Intel RAID has been disabled using AHCI, letting SME take care of the RAID..

The DQ67 is certified for RHLEnt 6.2, the DQ77 is certified for RHLEnt 6.3. Which may be the issue.

[Stefano]

that SME8 is centos5 based, and so its kernel is unable to work correctly on your hw.. this is the issue

[geoff]

Thank you for your prompt reply, Stefano, this is what I suspected.

Any recommendations for hardware?

Appreciate your help. Thank you.

[Stefano]

use certified hw, better if branded..

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/linux/hplinuxcert.html

[purvis]

I always say to buy two computers and shelve one for problems.
You can usually pull the memory and hard disk out of the shelved unit and place those in the working computer.
If you have 40 users, then spend good money for quality equipment.
Also make sure that you are using  commercial grade hard drives.
If you can, purchase even a third one for longer use of the same equipment.

This is why I do not always purchase the most expensive in our small offices.
Things are going to break.
I only buy the computers with Intel
Processors.

You get one computer running and test that machine before purchasing any backup machines.
Get a machine that has good power supplies built in them and put money also into providing clean good electricity to you computers. This cost may actually be equal to the cost of your computer.
Before viruses, poor electricity was the biggest known computer problem

[geoff]

Puzzled by the DQ67 board being OK and the DQ77 board ending in kernel panic, I had a look at the installation notes for the DQ67.

I successfully installed SME8.0 to the i3, DQ67 box using only 2Gb RAM, then restored the backup, completed all of the updates and only then upgraded to 4Gb RAM two days later when the extra RAM arrived, and installed the PAE kernel. It has been fast and stable ever since. So I shutdown and disconnected the existing HDD replacing them with a spare pair of blank SATA Drives. Installing with the PAE kernel causes kernel panic on reboot, the same result as the DQ77, yet the standard kernel seems to load up and boot OK.

Any ideas? Can anyone help with an install command to stop the PAE kernel installing, please?

[janet]

geoff

Can anyone help with an install command to stop the PAE kernel installing, please?

Just select the older kernel by quickly pressing the up/down cursor key when you see the splash screen with the list of kernels.
This selection should be permanent, but if it is not for you, then edit /boot/grub/grub.conf
These changes to the file will be retained.
ie
default=0
or 1 or 2 depending which kernel you want to boot to.
The numerical order is the list order of kernels shown in grub.conf (where 0=first)

[geoff]

Thank you, Mary. Unfortunately as a fresh install there is only the default kernel on offer which is PAE with 4Gb RAM

I just found this on the Centos5 forum:

The hd controller on the new motherboard is not supported by the drivers in the initrd. Boot the installation DVD in rescue mode.
Follow the onscreen instructions to chroot to the root filesystem on the HD.
Run mkinitrd for the kernel installed in the /boot partition.

Which is a bit beyond my meagre Linux talents.

It might be easier to just reload and configure it with 2Gb RAM, then upgrade as I did before.

Thank you for your help, Mary. You're always there and your input is appreciated.

[geoff]

This is helpful from the Centos forum.

https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=40557&forum=39#threadtop

[lloydh]

I went through the same problem as here in mid 2011 when my home server was on its last legs, I couldn't afford a HP or Dell type server and I couldn't find a list of certified motherboards on the Red Hat site.

In the end I settled on a Gigabyte GA880GM-USB3 motherboard, AMD CPU, 4GB RAM and 2 x 500GB drives.          SME7 would install ok but the clock kept gaining about 40 minutes every hour, I tried numerous kernel options found on Google searches to no avail.        In the end I loaded SME8 beta and it worked well so I ran with it and it is still happily running now obviously on full SME8.

I am going through the same pain again now with a new desktop PC looking at compatibility because I multiboot Win XP, Win 7, Ubuntu and Centos.         I finally settled on an Asus P8Z77-V-PRO motherboard, i5 3.4G CPU and 16GB RAM which finished up way over budget but everything seems to be working, I am just having a small battle with Ubuntu recognising the Centos LVM volumes but I think I have one that one as well as having to slipstream the SATA drivers into my XP CD because the new motherboard doesn't have floppy support.

I spent a lot of time looking in the Centos forums before my purchase and Mary is right, the general consensus there was also "If it is Intel it will probably work".

One of the problems with SME as well as Centos have is they are both behind a lot of the flavours of Linux and that is not a criticism.       The current Centos 6.3 kernal is roughly at the same level as Ubuntu was two years ago but that is why I like Centos, because it is fully tested and very stable.        The only reason I still use Ubuntu is because I do a lot of video processing and all the tools I need are in the Ubuntu repositories but I am slowly moving things across to Centos.

The point I am getting at is that all of this makes chosing a motherboard difficult because you can normally only get the latest models with the latest chipsets which may not be supported by the older levels of OS and sometimes may never be supported.

[janet]

geoff

Your question seems to be "floating".

Unfortunately as a fresh install there is only the default kernel on offer which is PAE with 4Gb RAM

Maybe you can boot into Rescue mode & then manually force the install of a different kernel.
Then edit grub.conf while you are there to boot up to the new kernel

The hd controller on the new motherboard is not supported by the drivers in the initrd. Boot the installation DVD in rescue mode.

If that's an issue, perhaps it only needs the motherboard RAID functionality to be disabled in BIOS.
Let sme server software RAID take over then.

.........It might be easier to just reload and configure it with 2Gb RAM, then upgrade as I did before.

Well, yes !

[geoff]

Thank you for your suggestions, Mary.

The BIOS RAID has been disabled.

I reconfigured the DQ77 with 2Gb RAM and it still installed the PAE kernel, and I do not have the knowledge and/or experience to boot into Rescue mode & then manually force the install of a different kernel or edit grub.conf to boot up to the new kernel, so it looks like I am in trouble.

Thanks to everyone for their support.

[janet]

geoff

Please take some time to make yourself familiar with the documentation, especially the FAQ, & the Howtos, there is a wealth of information & tips there, sometimes a little bit hidden, so you need to do a quick read of all the wiki articles to see (learn) what is there. See the links to these at the top of the Forums.

I reconfigured the DQ77 with 2Gb RAM and it still installed the PAE kernel, and I do not have the knowledge and/or experience to boot into Rescue mode

OK, read ALL of this, especially the section titled Rescue Mode Help
http://wiki.contribs.org/Booting
note the need to mount to allow editing
mount -n -o remount /

then manually force the install of a different kernel

It's possible there is a install switch that will allow a different kernel to be installed from the CD during a normal install procedure, but I don't know it.

I'm not sure if the following is a correct procedure, meaning I have not tried & tested it, so see how you go

In rescue mode install the kernel you require
From here
http://distro.ibiblio.org/smeserver/releases/8/smeos/i386/SME/
you see a non PAE kernel
kernel-2.6.18-308.4.1.el5.i686.rpm

Download this to a USB & get (copy) it onto your sme server, then do
rpm -Uvh kernel-2.6.18-308.4.1.el5.i686.rpm
You may need some other dependency rpms also, so you may need to do this a few times to manually get (copy) all the required rpms onto your sme, and then install them all in the one go.

Alternatively you may be able to use the wget command
wget http://distro.ibiblio.org/smeserver/releases/8/smeos/i386/SME/kernel-2.6.18-308.4.1.el5.i686.rpm

Do the same for any other dependency rpms (you may need to change the folder location).

Other non PAE kernels should also be on the install CD (earlier versions) so you could also obtain the rpm files from the CD.

or edit grub.conf to boot up to the new kernel

If you can get the other kernel installed, then you can just select it at boot time, so no need to edit the grub.conf

If needed, to edit it do,
cd /boot/grub
nano -w grub.conf
change the default value to 0 or 1 or 2 depending which kernel you want to select
0 is the first one listed, 1 is the second one listed, 2 is the third one listed & so on.

Ctrl o to save the file

Reboot

[geoff]

WOW! Thank you for taking the considerable time and trouble to answer, Mary.

I'll let you know how I go.

Thank you!

[geoff]

I think I am out of luck. The wget command worked perfectly, and despite managing to install the non PAE kernel, it still kernel panicked on the non PAE kernel.

I also did this (from the Centos Forum)

https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=40557&forum=39

Even though they have marked it SOLVED I still could not get it to work, getting the error: 'No modules available ......'

Thanks to everyone for their help.