Compaq Proliant 1850R autoconfiguring issueForum: Other Help Topics Topic: Compaq Proliant 1850R autoconfiguring issue started by: green Posted by green on Nov. 23 2004,05:13
Machine:Compaq Proliant 1850R Two P3's at 550Mhz 644MB ram Six HD's Using DSL Live CD 0.8.3 During boot when it gets to the " autoconfiguring devices " part, it hangs. Using " failsafe " at boot get's it through that and into X. Had to play with " xsetup.sh " and got the mouse to act like a normal mouse should. I can configure the NIC and get on the network using DHCP. Monkey works. ssh works. ftp works. floppy works when mounted with the dockapp, but didn't when trying to mount from terminal, even tried sudo and sudo su. cfdisk while sudo or sudo su let's me see a 48MB partition on hda. I can not see any hard drive's and would like to install to hard drive. I am not very familiar with servers and have not figured out how to " see " the hardrives and mount them. The dockapp does not show any hard drives. Have poked around on the forums and will try using a suggestion I found which is to use the Knoppix (3.6) Live CD when I get the chance. Will also be taking my DSL 0.8.4 CD as well. The DSL CD I'm using has been used on several machines (it ain't no virgin!) and has given me considerably great success. It seems like this is probably something easy that I am over looking regarding the use of SCSI drives, or RAID, or something. Not really sure. Yes, I'm a noob to Linux and DSL, but love it, and have blown away XP on my home machine to prove it. I'm open to suggestions, even not so nice ones, but I have tried to find info on this, just have not come up with much. TIA BTW I do not see two penguins at boot......... Posted by skaos on Nov. 23 2004,11:21
It could be that DSL doesn't come with a module for your (raid?) SCSI card(s) ... maybe Knoppix has. Posted by AwPhuch on Nov. 23 2004,14:50
/me DROOLS!!!!! Brian AwPhuch Posted by green on Nov. 24 2004,00:16
Knoppix 3.6 Live CD does not work either.However, found the following quote when searching through the forums from roberts "I would guess that dsl-0.7.3, the last syslinux based version, would boot on your system." He was referring to an older SCSI system, similar to the one discussed on this post. Will give it a try when I get the CD burned and post back with results, good or bad. In the meantime, I would appreciate any suggestions. Posted by green on Nov. 24 2004,00:19
Brian,Why don't you drool some brain cells on this issue? That way, if you get a system like that you'll already know what to do. I'll be your tester. Posted by green on Nov. 24 2004,01:12
What the hell does this mean? /KNOPPIX/dev/ida/c0d0 PIX/dev/ida/c0d02 PIX/dev/ida/c0d05 01 /KNOPPIX/dev/ida/c0c01 fat16 35.64MB 02 /KNOPPIX/dev/ida/c0d02 ntfs Active 3.95GB 03 /KNOPPIX/dev/ida/c0d03 extended 4.49GB 04 /KNOPPIX/dev/ida/c0d05 ntfs 4.49GB /KNOPPIX/dev/ida/c0d01 PIX/dev/ida/c0d11 01 /KNOPPIX/dev/ida/c0d11 ntfs 16.96.GB I mean, i know those must be partitions with type and size. I obtained that info with QTParted 0.4.4. How do I mount them so I can kill them, then install DSL or Knoppix ? Then get the whole friggin thing to boot proper? Grrr....... I know, I know, "if you got that info with QTParted, then kill them with that. " I hear someone saying that already. The problem is, I do not know if a HD install would be successful, and furthermore, if the first cold boot would do what I want it to or be insubordinate. There MUST be some DSL guru's with SCSI knowledge....... Posted by green on Nov. 24 2004,01:33
I said "screw it" and now have the following displayed when running QTParted:PIX/dev/ida/c0d01 (2.27MB) 01 /KNOPPIX/dev/ida/c0d01 ext2 8.47GB PIX/dev/ida/c0d11 (272.71MB) 01 /KNOPPIX/dev/ida/c0d11 ext2 16.96GB Where are the other 4 drives ? Could this machine be doing a hardware RAID so therefore not 'showing' the other drives? Would like to have more than 25GB of space, but that's only two drives mirrored. Drive Bays: 0 = 9.1 GB 1 = 18.2 GB 2 = 18.2 GB 3 = 18.2 GB 4 = 9.1 GB 5 = 9.1 GB Would I better off with a different configuration of the drives as far as which slot they are in? Or, perhaps they should all be the same? I only have three 9.1 GB dirves and three 18.2 GB drives. They are all Ultra SCSI and the 9.1's are labeled as "10K" Ideas ? Posted by skaos on Nov. 24 2004,11:30
I'm no expert, but I think many scsi cards have a separate bios which you enter into with some key sequence during boot. There may be some info about raid config in the scsi bios. Another thing you could do is to find out exactly which scsi card(s) you have and then do a bit of googling. BTW, 10K means 10.000 rpm.
Posted by green on Nov. 24 2004,19:08
tried:DSL 0.7.3, no go unless in failsafe mode Vector 4.3, no go with scsi kernel, no go with ide kernel Skaos, i think you're right. I need to find the key sequence to access BIOS. Can't find it yet. I'll keep looking unless someone feels compassion and feels the need to bequeeth us with that knowledge..... getting ready to sell this thing to AwPhuch if it keeps pissing me off. Posted by AwPhuch on Nov. 24 2004,21:23
are they scsi or ide drives??Have you checked the bios, see if there is something in there like pnp OS, and other stuff. If they are IDE drives and you want to completely wipe (zero out) the drive then get dariks boot and nuke < http://awphuch2000.dyndns.org:1079/dban > get the autobuild quick from my site and that will factory default the drives and get them ready for a fresh install... Sorry to drool on your machine instead of helping, I have been busy with < http://rockhouston.com > and all that stuff..sorry Brian AwPhuch Posted by green on Nov. 26 2004,04:15
The drives are SCSI.I gained some assistance from a "server guy" at work. We were able to do some preliminary setup: upgraded bios and firmware. Two of the drives were not working, but he fixed that. Made two arrays: Array 1 = two 9GB's mirrored for the OS Array 2 = four 18 GB's RAID 5 for data, etc. He also looked around the HP website for Linux info regarding that particular server. Since all the distro's I've tried thus far hang unless in failsafe, he was able to find HP's suggestions, which were Red Hat 8 or SUSE 9. The SmartArray controller sounds like it may be picky as far as Linux is concerned. And since I have no experience with RAID, servers, or SCSI, I will be trying different distros until I find the 'right' one. I would guess that many distros would work, I just don't know what to do to make them work. May even be as easy as pass something during boot, but who knows. Something intersting, though, was when I tried Knoppix with the newer experimental kernel at boot, it made it through the autoconfig part, but when it goes to bring up X, the screen goes blank and I can not figure out how to get back to the prompt. That was encouraging, but my limited experience raised it's ugly head again. I'm downloading Fedora3, and will try my SUSE 9.1, and Red Hat 9, just to see if they work on an experience level such as mine. Posted by cbagger01 on Nov. 26 2004,05:46
FYI,If your X-Windows does not work right, you can press CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to return to the text mode. Then make the needed changes to your XF86Config-4 file and restart Xwindows with the "startx" command. Posted by green on Nov. 26 2004,18:06
That's what I usually do, however, that didn't work in this case. I don't know why......There is something "speacial" about this machine and I'm starting not to like it. Red Hat 9 hangs when starting the install process. Suse 9 hangs when starting the install process. Fedora Core 3 won't even get THAT far..... I'm about to break out the WindowsNT Server CD's...... at least I KNOW that works on it. (somebody stop me!..... please) Posted by cbagger01 on Nov. 26 2004,20:32
When the screen goes blank, if you press the "Num Lock" key, does the Num Lock LED turn on and off?If is does not toggle on and off then your computer is locked up. Otherwise, you are probably experiencing a problem with the display and not the entire computer. Try booting knoppix or dsl with the "vga=normal" boot command and see if that helps. Posted by green on Nov. 30 2004,04:32
cbagger,I do not recall trying the numlock key, but will make a mental note to pay attention to that next time. I want to say I tried the "normal" mode, but it's not in my notes so I'll do it again, or the for the first time or whichever the case may be. I am resisting the urge to install NT Server, I really hate to do that. This machine is too good for Bill Gates and would feel very triumphant if DSL or Knoppix was at it's heart. Thanks for the tips! |