Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350
Jeremy Chadwick wrote: Oliver Fromme wrote: If it's really only a web server, then you probably don't need the USB ports. In that case you should remove ohci and ehci from your kernel. The USB interrupt handler is quite heavy-weight, so it can have a noticeable impact if the interrupt is shared with other devices. I'll agree with this (re: webservers not needing USB), except in regards to one item: keyboards. More and more x86 PCs these days are expecting keyboards to be USB-based. Yes, PS/2 ports are still present on most (but not all) motherboards, but eventually that will be phased out. Personally I never buy hardware that requires me to connect a keyboard for management (no matter whether USB or PS/2). I like the idea of being able to go to my co-location facility and plug in a USB keyboard to begin working on a server, and when finished remove the keyboard and leave. I don't like that idea at all. I like the idea of not having to go to my co-location facility, but instead be able to manage my servers completely remotely. We're not in the stone age anymore ... Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way. With Perl you can manipulate text, interact with programs, talk over networks, drive Web pages, perform arbitrary precision arithmetic, and write programs that look like Snoopy swearing. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350
Ivan Voras wrote: - The showstopper: Sysinstall completes (though slowly), but on reboot the loader doesn't go further than the F1 prompt :( This is very curious, since when booting from install CD the loader shows it recognizes the CD drive and drives A: and C:, so BIOS seems to be ok. If I understand the loader correctly, after the F1 prompt phase, the loader should transfer control to the boot block of the first slice? There's something unusual going on and I don't know what else to try. Finally, after fiddling with various options, I've sort-of got it to work by creating two slices (s1, s2), setting root partition on s1a and the rest (/usr, /var, etc.) on s2. Now, the F1 prompt boot stage behaves like this: - if I leave F1 to be the default, boot fails, beeping when trying to boot like before. Nothing changes when pressing F1 multiple time (it always fails and beeps). - if I leave F2 to be the default, boot fails with invalid partition message and escapes to the boot: prompt - if I press F1 and then F2, it beeps on F1 but after F2 is pressed it proceeds to boot from s1a! I really don't know what is going on. The disk array is supposed to be clean, without hidden partitions (at least, fdisk doesn't see any). Is the loader re-reading the table after a failed boot (with F1), and something corrupts the data on first read? Or maybe it's a boot0 bug? Any ideas? As it stands, the machine can't boot unattended, which makes it unusable. More info: at the /boot/loader stage, lsdev shows disk0 as A:, but the floppy doesn't exist on this machine, and disk1 as C:, with normal partitions (e.g. disk1s1a, etc.) ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350
There's something unusual going on and I don't know what else to try. Finally, after fiddling with various options, I've sort-of got it to work by creating two slices (s1, s2), setting root partition on s1a and the rest (/usr, /var, etc.) on s2. Now, the F1 prompt boot stage behaves like this: [snip] This sounds similar to a Compaq machine I used to have with a SMART RAID in it. I had 3 drives - a SCSI, and two on the RAID. It would beep at F1 as well. I had to press F5 3 times to cycle through all the drives, but then when I got back to the original I could press F1 and it would now boot fine. I never solved it, aand eventually changed machine (though not the hardware). At the time it did not matter so much as the machine was a server so when booted would just run until it manually needed to be restarted. -pete. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350
On Mon, 13 Nov 2006, Pete French wrote: There's something unusual going on and I don't know what else to try. Finally, after fiddling with various options, I've sort-of got it to work by creating two slices (s1, s2), setting root partition on s1a and the rest (/usr, /var, etc.) on s2. Now, the F1 prompt boot stage behaves like this: [snip] This sounds similar to a Compaq machine I used to have with a SMART RAID in it. I had 3 drives - a SCSI, and two on the RAID. It would beep at F1 as well. I had to press F5 3 times to cycle through all the drives, but then when I got back to the original I could press F1 and it would now boot fine. I never solved it, aand eventually changed machine (though not the hardware). At the time it did not matter so much as the machine was a server so when booted would just run until it manually needed to be restarted. Hmm, it looks like it's a bug in boot0. I've replaced it with ports/sysutils/extipl and the machine boots fine now. Btw. I can confirm extipl works on amd64, so ONLY_FOR_ARCHS line can be updated now. Grub still doesn't. -- Things Mr Welch Cannot Do During An RPG: 135. I cannot demand payment in electrum, backrubs or bubblewrap. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350
Ivan Voras wrote: - The less serious problem: It looks like a whole bunch of built-in devices is routed to irq 29: bce, ciss, ohci and ehci. I notice last three are giant locked, which doesn't look good, especially since this should be a loaded web server. If it's really only a web server, then you probably don't need the USB ports. In that case you should remove ohci and ehci from your kernel. The USB interrupt handler is quite heavy-weight, so it can have a noticeable impact if the interrupt is shared with other devices. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way. (On the statement print 42 monkeys + 1 snake:) By the way, both perl and Python get this wrong. Perl gives 43 and Python gives 42 monkeys1 snake, when the answer is clearly 41 monkeys and 1 fat snake.-- Jim Fulton ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350
On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 05:33:24PM +0100, Oliver Fromme wrote: If it's really only a web server, then you probably don't need the USB ports. In that case you should remove ohci and ehci from your kernel. The USB interrupt handler is quite heavy-weight, so it can have a noticeable impact if the interrupt is shared with other devices. I'll agree with this (re: webservers not needing USB), except in regards to one item: keyboards. More and more x86 PCs these days are expecting keyboards to be USB-based. Yes, PS/2 ports are still present on most (but not all) motherboards, but eventually that will be phased out. I like the idea of being able to go to my co-location facility and plug in a USB keyboard to begin working on a server, and when finished remove the keyboard and leave. PS/2 was never intended to be hot-swappable, and as I'm sure many can attest to, removing or adding a PS/2 keyboard is generally frowned upon (it works here, it doesn't work there, etc.). I've seen some recent commits to the keyboard code which address being able to plug in a PS/2 keyboard while the machine is powered on (thus not having to reboot), for what it's worth. Summary: ukbd is one reason USB is useful on servers. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networkinghttp://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB | ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350
Jeremy Chadwick wrote: On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 05:33:24PM +0100, Oliver Fromme wrote: If it's really only a web server, then you probably don't need the USB ports. In that case you should remove ohci and ehci from your kernel. The USB interrupt handler is quite heavy-weight, so it can have a noticeable impact if the interrupt is shared with other devices. I'll agree with this (re: webservers not needing USB), except in regards to one item: keyboards. Yup. And iLO. In fact, it appears that there's some builtin connection between USB, iLO, ethernet and ciss - changing IRQ of one of them in BIOS changes it for all of them :( finished remove the keyboard and leave. PS/2 was never intended to be hot-swappable, and as I'm sure many can attest to, removing And it's shaped worse than USB. Summary: ukbd is one reason USB is useful on servers. Yes. From what I can see, these days the number of servers *without any* PS/2 connectors is passing 50%. ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350
On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 09:19:45AM -0800, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: I'll agree with this (re: webservers not needing USB), except in regards to one item: keyboards. More and more x86 PCs these days are expecting keyboards to be USB-based. Yes, PS/2 ports are still present on most (but not all) motherboards, but eventually that will be phased out. I like the idea of being able to go to my co-location facility and plug in a USB keyboard to begin working on a server, and when finished remove the keyboard and leave. Don't you really need to have a monitor, as well? I _have_ worked blind before, but I didn't enjoy it. I can imagine having a keyboard with me when wandering around, but wouldn't normally have a monitor. I had always thought that the preferred solution for this sort of case was to use a serial console. And what seems to be becoming common on servers is a BIOS that allows you to fully redirect to serial, including BIOS configuration. The servers that I have recently purchased have had a keyboard and monitor plugged into them _once_ -- for the first BIOS setup -- and then never again. -- greg byshenk - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Leiden, NL ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350
Same for me Greg. Everything I use runs on serial console including my *BSD servers, SUN, DSLAMs etc. I would say any server worth it's weight has serial redirection in it's BIOS. Most of the servers I admin are international and I use the sesrial console to fix problems if and when they arise. The majority are SUN which supports lights out management even. Then again when you're paying for SUN and running Oracle in clussters you kind of expect these kind of features. Saying that my 2 servers at home are Tyan motherboards with SMP. Both of them support serial redirection in in the BIOS and they are not particularly fancy motherboards. I use mainly WTI serial console management boxes. They have a few models which fit every need I've ever had. VPN into customer private LAN then telnetting into the console server sure as hell beats flying 4000 miles to sort something out. It's cheaper and faster. And besides that I have console access to the servers wherever I happen to be that and an internet connection. - Original Message - From: Greg Byshenk [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Sent: Monday, November 13, 2006 9:22 PM Subject: Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350 On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 09:19:45AM -0800, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: I'll agree with this (re: webservers not needing USB), except in regards to one item: keyboards. More and more x86 PCs these days are expecting keyboards to be USB-based. Yes, PS/2 ports are still present on most (but not all) motherboards, but eventually that will be phased out. I like the idea of being able to go to my co-location facility and plug in a USB keyboard to begin working on a server, and when finished remove the keyboard and leave. Don't you really need to have a monitor, as well? I _have_ worked blind before, but I didn't enjoy it. I can imagine having a keyboard with me when wandering around, but wouldn't normally have a monitor. I had always thought that the preferred solution for this sort of case was to use a serial console. And what seems to be becoming common on servers is a BIOS that allows you to fully redirect to serial, including BIOS configuration. The servers that I have recently purchased have had a keyboard and monitor plugged into them _once_ -- for the first BIOS setup -- and then never again. -- greg byshenk - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Leiden, NL ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350
On Mon, Nov 13, 2006 at 08:22:39PM +0100, Greg Byshenk wrote: Don't you really need to have a monitor, as well? I _have_ worked blind before, but I didn't enjoy it. I can imagine having a keyboard with me when wandering around, but wouldn't normally have a monitor. I had always thought that the preferred solution for this sort of case was to use a serial console. Sure do (re: monitor). Most co-location facilities provide a cart that contains both keyboards and monitors on it, which you can wheel around and use for VGA console configuration. If you notice, though, most keyboard vendors (Logitech, Microsoft, Kensington, Dell, Apple, and I'm sure many others) are now selling USB-only keyboards. They do not include a USB-to-PS/2 adapter (and I'll remind people: the USB-to-PS/2 adapters you get for your mice *will not* work with PS/2 keyboards! Different protocol, same socket). So it's becoming hard to get PS/2 keyboards too! And what seems to be becoming common on servers is a BIOS that allows you to fully redirect to serial, including BIOS configuration. The servers that I have recently purchased have had a keyboard and monitor plugged into them _once_ -- for the first BIOS setup -- and then never again. And I can speak about this a bit too, because I've spent the past 5 years fighting with serial console on x86 architecture in general. BIOS-level serial console, generally speaking, is utter garbage on most x86 servers I've dealt with. Sparcs have OpenBoot (or whatever it's called), which is apparently fantastic. Take SuperMicro, for example. These BIOSes provide only 3 options: what COM port you want serial console to use, what speed, and leave Agent enabled after BIOS config. Some (hardly all) provide a 4th option: what terminal emulation you want (ANSI, VT100+, etc.). I won't talk about the emulation aspect, because anyone familiar with BIOS-level serial console knows what you get: crap. Full screen redraw a hundred times a second across a 9600bps connection? Yeah, sounds good! Screen clears for no particular reason? Awesome. Hey, did you want to read that BIOS output about Bank 2 memory bad? Nope, too bad, it's gone, replaced with random escape characters and missing data. Did you want hardware flow control with that BIOS? No sorry, we don't offer that, you'll have to accept missing characters. (Okay, so maybe I did talk about it.) The Agent enabled option is what you want to use to get serial console redirection to work with things like boot0, yadda yadda: that is, redirect the literal 80x25 text VGA console to a serial port. The problem is this: the instant any software on the host machine touches the serial port interrupt in any way shape or form, the BIOS Agent locks up, and you stop getting serial output altogether. You get nothing. Dead in the water. Nada. Zilch. I've spent a lot of time trying to get FreeBSD to **not** touch the serial port in any way. I can get boot0 to behave, and even boot2/loader to comply. But the instant the kernel loads (if I remember right, you never even see the Copyright message), even with device.hints saying sio.0.disabled=1 __or__ building the kernel w/out any sio device at all, you lose the Agent. Now I'll mention this part: has anyone here tried talking to a motherboard vendor before about BIOS changes, fixes, or any- thing of that nature? Good luck. You'll be stonewalled by a technical support group who seems to think whatever it is you want is a result of you not knowing what you're doing. No, your ACPI DSDT is incorrect, I need to talk to an engineer OK we have forward mail to engineer, thanks you. *blink* All of this is where two pieces of present-day technology win: KVM-over-IP devices, and iLO/LOM cards. Now, the problem with those: iLO/LOM are only available with specific vendors (HP/Compaq and Sun), and many are known to be implemented in a bizarre way (that is, sharing an Ethernet port with the actual host mainboard. HP/Compaq doesn't do this, their iLO cards have their own Ethernet port/NIC). The problem with the 'shared' method is that it causes all sort-of ARP madness on local networks. It reminds me of the problem with IPMI modules right now, where the board essentially answers with two separate MAC addresses, confusing ARP tables all over the place. As for KVM-over-IP devices: fantastic in every way... except for price. They're overpriced by 4x or so. What you get is a generic 1U box which usually runs Linux, has some D-sub and PS/2 break-out boxes (you have to buy each one for US$50 each or so), uses open-source software, and has some ADCs. The cost? Oh, a miniscule US$4500 lets you handle 8 devices. There is a third solution: one of those PC Weasel cards. Awesome idea, but overpriced. I'm not going to pay US$350 per PCI card, I'm sorry. But in defence of the vendor, it's apparently one guy building them and running the whole outfit, so I guess I can understand the need for a higher
