topic Re: kickstarting different Proliant models in Operating System - Linux

kickstarting different Proliant models

Paul McDevitt — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 11:35:07 GMT

My customer built a rhel 2.1 ES kickstart server on a DL380 G2. They can use it to deploy additional DL380G2s successfully, but get errors trying to deploy DL360G3s. Can anything be done to this server, to make it serve multiple Proliant models, or must they build a separate kickstart server for DL380G3?

Re: kickstarting different Proliant models

Darrin St. Amant — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 15:26:08 GMT

Hey Paul,

We run here at the Houston ASC w/ a 2.1 KS server here on a DL380G2 and I have successfully deployed on G3, DL580, Bl20Ps, and more with no problem. What type of problems are your customers experiencing.

ds.

Re: kickstarting different Proliant models

Greg Wojtak — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 15:31:03 GMT

with the possible exception of any hardware level rpm's (ie drivers) or pre- or post- install scripts, the kickstart files should be pretty platform agnostic. I would start by checking these sections.

Re: kickstarting different Proliant models

Stuart Browne — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 17:52:55 GMT

I agree with both Greg and Darrin.

Try doing a manual install on the DL360G3 and seeing if it asks for any drivers.

What adapter cards are in the DL380's as against what's in the DL360G3's?

Umm, actually.. are the new one's 360's or 380's? you say both.

Re: kickstarting different Proliant models

Paul McDevitt — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 20:08:55 GMT

the hardware delta seems to be the SMART 5i Plus controller in the 360 G3, versus the SMART 5i in the 380 G2. We will build a kickstart server on a 360 on Thursday with a RHEL .21 AS U3 CD,and see if it asks for additional drivers. They may have used an original 2.1 distro CD to build the old 380 G2 kickstart server, so it may have some downlevel drivers/kernel.

Re: kickstarting different Proliant models

Stuart Browne — Wed, 07 Apr 2004 20:22:59 GMT

Well both the machines use Smart Array 5i's, both of which use the same controller driver (cciss).

The problem is more likely to be the network card drivers.

The DL360G3's use a Broadcomm 5700 based NIC, where as the G2's use older 10/100's (not sure what chipset they are based on).

See:
360G3: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11504_na/11504_na.HTML
380G2: http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/10902_na/10902_na.HTML

The issue will be finding RHAS2.1U3 'bcm5700' drivers for a network boot.

I know there's a U2 bootnet image (another thread has a similar issue ( http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=542134 ), but no solution) which has the appropraite driver, but no U3 image yet.

Sorry.

Re: kickstarting different Proliant models

Darrin St. Amant — Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:08:53 GMT

Paul,

Your having a issue issue when KS.
You can also try using the initrd-everything.img which has all drivers imaged in. This usually works for me

ds.