Re: Installing on Compaq Servers

[Chris Tillman]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 12:22:46PM -0500, Loren Jordan wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm not sure if this counts as a bug but here is the information I was able 
> to figure out.  If this should be filed as a bug let me know...

I think so.

> ... stuff I can't help with ...

> 
> I was not able to get the boot-floppies source package to build (yet) so I 
> am not yet able to work up a patch for the dbootstrap program.

What kinds of errors are you getting during the build? Did you do make
check first, and also make distclean if you rebuild? make
distclean seems to be the only way to reset the build after someone
changes a message in dbootstrap.

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Re: Installing on Compaq Servers

[Nicolas Lopez]

  I just installed woody ( to get to sid) on an ML350 G3 last month. I feel
your pain.

On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 12:22:46PM -0500, Loren Jordan wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I'm not sure if this counts as a bug but here is the information I was able 
> to figure out.  If this should be filed as a bug let me know...
  Probably.

> I have several Compaq servers (DL380's and DL360's) that are of the G2 
> generation.  They have a newer raid controller (Smart Array 5i) and none of 
> the boot disks support this controller, not even the "compact" set.  The 
> compact disks have worked for me before on the G1 Compaq boxes with the 
> "smart2" array in the past.
  Actually, they do, but as a module. Rather than extract the module the
"proper" way I just went through the install past "Install kernel & modules"
on the onboard scsi then copied the cciss.o to a floppy. I was able to then
reboot on the raid card, load the module, and continue on.

> on this custom kernel floppy to make it use the ram disk from boot.bin 
> (standard or 2.4).  This almost worked except for 2 problems.  The 
> dbootstrap program doesn't know anything about the "cciss" devices.  I 
  Yeah, that's a PITA too.

> The rest of the install didn't work either as it couldn't install the 
> "rescue" floppy as my custom kernel floppy didn't look like a "rescue" 
> floppy.  I didn't want to feed it the real rescue disk as it would be an 
> un-bootable kernel. (not able to mount the root file system,etc...)
  I chroot-ed into my install from the installer and built a new kernel.
Second or third time around I got the kernel right ;)

  Any sign of linux-based tools to mangle the raid setup? Somewhere burried
in the "Insight manager" maybe?

  - Nick Lopez
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Installing on Compaq Servers

[Loren Jordan]

Hello,

I'm not sure if this counts as a bug but here is the information I was able 
to figure out.  If this should be filed as a bug let me know...

I have several Compaq servers (DL380's and DL360's) that are of the G2 
generation.  They have a newer raid controller (Smart Array 5i) and none of 
the boot disks support this controller, not even the "compact" set.  The 
compact disks have worked for me before on the G1 Compaq boxes with the 
"smart2" array in the past.

All of this is using "woody".

I tried the 2.4 boot floppies but this didn't work either so I made my own 
boot floppy (make bzdisk) with a custom 2.4 kernel with the Smart Array 5X 
driver support built in.  I used the rdev commands
rdev /dev/fd0 /dev/fd0
rdev -r /dev/fd0 49152
on this custom kernel floppy to make it use the ram disk from boot.bin 
(standard or 2.4).  This almost worked except for 2 problems.  The 
dbootstrap program doesn't know anything about the "cciss" devices.  I 
determined this by sifting through the source code.  The other problem was 
that the /dev/cciss dir and assorted block device files were not in the 
root.bin floppy.  This is from the machine I was working on to try to get 
things working.

testbox:/proc# cat partitions
major minor #blocks  name
  104 0  17776560 cciss/c0d0
  104 140944 cciss/c0d0p1
  104 2 17225760 cciss/c0d0p2
  104 3   501040 cciss/c0dop3
testbox:/proc#

I took the root.bin file and modified it by adding the required /dev/cciss 
block files using the script from
http://www.linuxhq.com/kernel/v2.4/doc/mkdev.cciss.html (modifed to put 
them in the /temp/root.bin/dev dir where I had the root.bin-ungiped file 
mounted
and put it back on a floppy.  I was too lazy to just use the mknod 
command... This allowed me to start a shell while in the dbootstrap 
program, mke2fs and mount the drives however I had to do everything manually.

The rest of the install didn't work either as it couldn't install the 
"rescue" floppy as my custom kernel floppy didn't look like a "rescue" 
floppy.  I didn't want to feed it the real rescue disk as it would be an 
un-bootable kernel. (not able to mount the root file system,etc...)

I believe that the things required for this to work (out of the box) would 
be that the dbootstrap program be modified to look for more than just the 
hda,sda,rd/c0d0 and ida/c0d0 disks.
 snippet from bootconfig.c from the dbootstrap source dir #
#define DEV_HDA  "/dev/hda"
#define DEV_SDA  "/dev/sda"
#define DEV_RD_C0D0  "/dev/rd/c0d0"
#define DEV_IDA_C0D0 "/dev/ida/c0d0"
The root floppy AND the base system (MAKEDEV ?) should have the /dev/cciss 
dir and associated block device files added.


After figuring this out, I added the cciss/* files to a running system and 
just used a tarball of this system, I un-tared it onto the mounted 
"/target" file systems of the new machines and everything is running just 
fine on these machines (after fixing /etc/fstab) however it would have been 
nice for the install system to have worked.

I was not able to get the boot-floppies source package to build (yet) so I 
am not yet able to work up a patch for the dbootstrap program.

Thanks for your time and maybe a fix to dbootstrap?
Loren Jordan


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Loren Jordan

Network Security Admin
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Phone (304)363-4312 Ext 2011

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