Hangs populating system partition during SmartStart install

[Ayman Altounji]

Installing five DL380 servers with this controller and four Ultra-3 drives, I find that the SmartStart process hangs at the point it would normally begin formatting the temporary swap partition. In time, the SmartStart install routine fails out, asking that I put the SmartStart CD into the CD-ROM. CD-ROM is completely "lights out" at this point, although if ejected using paper clip it's still spinning. Using SmartStart 4.90 by the way.

By going back and forth between using the ACU included with the 5300 support software, and repeated system erases, eventually install is possible.

What's up with this? Anybody have a method of using this controller that doesn't eat away every dime of profit on a fixed price install?

[Ayman Altounji]

Probably the CD-ROM itself... Have you tried updating it's firmware?

Slimline CD-ROM Firmware

[Ayman Altounji]

Almost the same issue:

Smart Start 4.9 with DL380: The AC hangs when trying to detect the controllers. I've upgraded the DL380 ROM and the Slim DC and it still happens (Also used System Erase 1.36a). Does Compaq have any other ideas? By the way, take the 5300 out and the install works just fine!

[Ayman Altounji]

I would try to disable accelleration during the installation. This has cured all the install problems I've seen installing NT4 and W2K on a ML570 with a 5304 AC. Once the OS is installed re-enable accelleration.

[Ayman Altounji]

The 5300 locks up the AC and the AD (during Smart Start or booting the ODs). Is there any way to disable the accelerator?

[Ayman Altounji]

The 5300 locks up the ACU and the ADU (during SmartStart or booting the CDs). Is there any way to disable the accelerator?

[Ayman Altounji]

Hi ,
Yesterday I spend 6 hours in finding a Bypass for this problem .
Remove all extra memory and it works .
I've had 3 x DL380 + 5300 Ctrl with single and dual processor.
one system only has 384MB ram , this one worked directly.
The 2 other have 640 MB ram and gave me the lockup at ACU .
after removing the extra 512 MB and doing an erase , Smartstart continued and gave a good config.
regards ,

Koen VG

[Ayman Altounji]

The "removing-the-extra-RAM" trick did not work for me. SmartStart 4.90 did, without any problems - jkurver@csc.com

[Ayman Altounji]

Removing the memory fixed my problem with the Array Configuration hanging.

I had a Dual 1G processor ML370 with 640MB and a 5300 controller. I removed all but 128MB of RAM, re-run the AC and it worked.

Originally, the server would lock up on initialisation of the AC during the detection of the array controllers. The hardware would lock, the mouse pointer would even stop moving. Seems to be a rather common problem.