Can't see HDD while installing Suse 8 on dl380G4

[Ryan_177]

Hi all gurus,

I have problem installing SUSE 8 on the DL380G4 , the cd can be booted up but can't probe the integrated Smart Array 6i , resulted no HDD found.

Any workaround my gurus.....?

I did the F8 to setup the HDD , when view is found. Boot up Smart Start , go to ACU can be found the HDD ... but when go to SUSE installation ... the hdd is not there...?

[Steven E. Protter]

Have you run the disk array setup cd for your HP server. Its available on the hp website.

Isntall step is:
1) Boot off this cd and set up array.
2) Boot of Linux, proceed with installation.

SEP

[Ryan_177]

thanks for your reply ... but i try that earlier... it detected on the disk array app but not recognise when SUSE installation startup.

[Steven E. Protter]

I would then suggest Suse9 or Fedora Core 2 and see if it does any better.

SEP

[Stuart Browne]

I'd be guessing that the megaraid driver in Suse 8 doesn't see the newer U320 controllers (this is an issue with older distributions).

There should be a driver available on the HP website for during-install that could fix this. But I'm a RH guy, haven't used SuSE..

[Michael Williams_6]

Hello there, congratulations you've just gone through the exact same hell that I have!!

HP don't provide a particularly helpful set of ways around it, lucky for you I've gone through all the pain and have documented it! The relevant documentation is attached.

You'll need SLES8's SP3 CD, you can download it from SuSE if you have a maintenance agreement: http://psdb.suse.de/extra/i386/update/SuSE-SLES/8/UnitedLinux-1.0-SP-3-i386-RC4-CD1.iso

If you don't have this CD, reply to this post as there are other ways around it.

Five *very* important things to note though:

NOTE 1: You need to create a driver diskette which means that you'll need a floppy drive, which G4's don't come with as standard. However, if you have a DL380 G3, that will fit as it's the same device. If you don't have a G3 you can grab a floppy from but you do have a writable CD in a Linux box, you should be able to dd the floppy contents to a CD as the driver diskette can be on CD, I haven't tried it as I had a floppy to hand.

NOTE 2: SLES8 installation medium don't have USB drivers for a usb disk device, so you can't put the drivers on there

NOTE 3: Make sure you use the SLES8 SP3 CD to initiate the installation as it installs the latest kernel that's compatible with HP's drivers. This means once it's installed you can use the SP3 CD to update the system and then install HP's driver RPM and your system will still be able to reboot. Until the HP drivers are included in the kernel, or HP update their drivers to work with more kernels, then updating the kernel will cause your system to panic next time it boots.

NOTE 4: While this works a treat to install, if you have a lot of systems to build as I did, you'll find that Ghost does not work as it won't boot once restored... However this could be a grub issue, I didn't look too hard at it.

NOTE 6: Considering how helpful I've been, if I don't get an easy 10 points out of this I don't know what will!!!

[Ryan_177]

I manage to solve the issue , thanks all the gurus...

Confirm is the SA6i needs a driver to get it recognise.

[Ian Reid_3]

MWilliams comments that "if you don't have the SUSE SLES8 SP3CD there are ways around this....?

Could you provide details on this....

Thanks,
IR