'Boot Failed' on Proliant DL120 G6 with P212 RAID-Controller

[gregersenj]

No I don't know what he did, I'm trying to find it.

BR
/jag

[Thomas Wunder]

So here is the output of 'fdisk -l':

http://tom.back-in-five-minutes.de/fdisk-output.txt

and these are some screenshots (sorry for the bad quality) of the system BIOS and controler BIOS screen:

http://tom.back-in-five-minutes.de/screenshots.tar.bz2

[Thomas Wunder]

Hey Guys!
I finally got it working again! I downloaded the Firmware Update DVD from

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/cd/p1040529012/v56950/firmware-9.00-0.zip

and the version 2.74 firmware from

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/sc-linux-fw-array/p1997486963/v59217/CP012446.scexe

and downgraded the controller fw to that release.
Here's a detailed solution:



If you're unsure do NOT perform the steps described below.
THIS MAY LEAD TO HARDWARE DESTRUCTION OR DATA LOSS!
I do NOT assume any liability for the correctness of the following instructions, take this into account!!


This applies only to the Proliant DL120 G6 server, if a P212 Smart Array Controller is installed which was accidentally upgraded to FW 3.00 hence not bootable any more.




Put the cp012446.scexe on an usb flash drive (as scp or ssh is not supported by the firmware upgrade dvd) plug it into the server's USB socket, mount it, change to the mount point and run cp012446.scexe


For the less experienced users:
1. attach a SATA-DVD drive to the DL120 G6 (if it doesn't already have one). you have to open the hood and connect the SATA-power cable and you've got to connect the drive to one of the SATA-sockets on the mainboard (which has six SATA sockets in total) using a special SATA cord. You should preferably choose SATA1.

2. put the -- previously created -- firmware DVD into that drive

3. Check the BIOS settings (F10 to enter the BIOS-screen) to have the server boot from the DVD drive (maybe you've got to enable the internal SATA-Controller first and put the DVD (I think BIOS calls it a CDROM drive, but I'm not sure about that any more) at the first place of the boot order.

4. Have your DL120 boot from DVD

5. When asked select 'Interactive Firmware Update'

6. Once the boot is complete, change to the first console by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1

7. mount your flash drive (where you've previously put the 'cp012446.scexe' on) using 'mount /dev/sda1 /mnt' (though the first argument of this command depends on which drive/partition shall actually be mounted.

8. change to the /mnt directory by typing 'cd /mnt' and check whether cp012446.scexe is contained (using 'ls')

9. make the cp012466.scexe readable and executable for every user (for the sake of simplicity): 'chmod a+rx cp012446.scexe'

10. call the firmware updater (downgrade) and supply '-f' (force): './cp012446.scexe -f'

11. answer the questions and then BE PATIENT!!! The downgrade might take some minutes.

12. reboot by typing 'reboot'

13. check your BIOS settings (especially the 'boot' screen). 'Harddisk' should be unfoldable ('+' in front of 'Harddisk') and the P212 controller should be listed as a child entry if the downgrade was successful.


Excuse me for the poor english!

[gregersenj]

Sorry have been away, since my last post.

Glad you found a solution.

Just a comment on the downgrade procedure.

I haven't used FWDVD 9.0 yet.
But on privious versions
You could perform a downgrade from the gui.
copy the fw file to the packages folder.
from the gui select allow down grade.
select the fw in the selection screen.

It used to list all fw in the folder, that apply for the machine. Also if mulitble FW versions was available.

BR
/jag

[zeroDefects]

Successfully installed firmware update 3.30 to a P212 SmartArray in a Win2008 environment.

At POST after subsequent reboots it keeps reporting an error related to the mass storage controller.

OS doesn't boot anymore.

I have downloaded the HP-USB-Key utility and the firmware-8.70-0 iso file.

I'm going to try to downgrade the controller microcode to the previous version.

Is this the right way?

Thanx,
Alessandro

[Thomas Wunder]

i'm not quite sure since you didn't tell us the exact error message. first double check your BIOS settings.

additionally you have to consider that the above description applies to the 3.00 firmware of the P212 and i did the downgrade using the 9.00 firmware DVD. so it's hard to tell whether this is the correct way to do it...

[Thomas Wunder]

(I'm using the P212 in a Proliant DL120 G6)

[zeroDefects]

Thank to Thomas the solution he provided worked for me too :)

Shame to HP, this box is a real piece of junk, at least in this 5 users TS environment running W2K8. My customer's previous server was an ASUS desktop based solution on the same TS environment running W2K3. The integrated RAID controller was faster than light compared to this P212(w/256 MB), AND much much cheaper.

DL38x/ML35x series boxes are great servers but why should I push to buy so expensive hardware 4 just few users?

Thank you again Thomas!

[zeroDefects]

I realized I forgot to mention the box I was talking about is a ML110 G6 (X3430@2.40 GHz,4 GB RAM,2 SATA drives,P212 w/256).

Alessandro.

[Thomas Wunder]

Hi zeroDefects,
I can't really complain about the speed of the P212 or my DL120 G6. You might have a problem that experienced too: What type of harddisks do you use? Probably your disks use 4k blocks internally instead of 512b sized blocks. The correct partition alignment and a special block size setting would make a tremendous difference then.

Another thing that causes a really poor write speed is that the P212 (at least in my case) came without a battery buffered write cache hence write cache is disabled completely by default as long as you do not activate it manually. (You need to enter the raid-controller setup screen (via F10 at bootup) and enable the "Override Write Cache Battery" or something like that). But be aware that without the battery pack and this setting turned on you might experience a data loss in case of a power interruption.