Installing Ubuntu Linux on an rx2600 hangs

[Douglas Rupp]

Attempting to install any version of Ubuntu Linux from 6.06 through 10.04 hangs after uncompressing initrd.gz from the CD.

Searching the Ubuntu forums yields a similar complaint solved by installing the latest firmware, which however is already installed on my system afaict.

The offending system currently has HP-UX 11.23 installed.

I have a second rx2600 running VMS 8.3, with identical firmware which does boot the Ubuntu 8.04 CD, but not the 10.04.

I'm wondering if somehow the fact that HP-UX is installed is the issue, don't know enough about it to do more than speculate.

Any help or ideas will be much appreciated!

FIRMWARE INFORMATION

Firmware Revision: 2.31 [4411]

PAL_A Revision: 7.31/7.31
PAL_B Revision: 7.59

SAL Spec Revision: 3.01
SAL_A Revision: 2.00
SAL_B Revision: 2.31

EFI Spec Revision: 1.10
EFI Intel Drop Revision: 14.61
EFI Build Revision: 1.22

POSSE Revision: 0.10

ACPI Revision: 7.00

BMC Revision 1.53
IPMI Revision: 1.00
SMBIOS Revision: 2.3.2a
Management Processor Revision: E.03.13

[Ryan Green · Accepted solution]

It may not be hanging. I ran into the same thing trying to install CentOS, SLES, and Debian on a rx2660.

You may need to define the serial port as ttyS0 via the EFI. There is some information in a HP doc, 5187-4551, Installing Linux on HP Itanium 2-based servers and workstations. The copy I have is dated January 2004.

Also, it may help to use the Smart Setup for the install found at http://software.hp.com. Select the Linux section and look for the Smart Setup link. Burn this to a CD and boot off of it.

[Douglas Rupp]

That fixed it.

In the boot option maintenance menu of the offending system, I changed the console input/output/error devices from a serial 1 device (aka PNP) to a console device (aka HWP), did a cold reset and voila! Thanks!

[Douglas Rupp]

See my last post.