Linux FC9 with ML310 G5 and embedded SATA RAID controller

[D. Greg Scott]

...Long story short, it does not boot.

Details -

I have two 750GB drives set up with hardware RAID 1. This all works. The controller BIOS recognized the drives, and I formatted it all with RAID 1.

I booted the Linux FC9 CD and installed FC9 successfully with the packages I chose. So far, so good.

After the installation, now it's time to boot from the hard drive. The system goes thru POST, then attempts to boot from the hard drive, and....

nothing.

It sits there dead as can be. After a few seconds, the Caps-Lock key no longer even lights up the LED light on the keyboard. It just halts.

Power-cycle, same thing.

So I booted the network installation CD and started a rescue operation. The CD boots, searches the hard drive, and finds a valid Linux installation. I can see everything under /mnt/sysimage.

But booting from that SATA RAID 1 set is a no-go.

It's an HP embedded SATA RAID controller V5.0-0 B2245. So far, I've been waiting on hold with HP for about 20 minutes and counting. Maybe somebody will answer the phone and log my support call sometime tonight...

Please please please, somebody tell me there's a firmware update for this controller that will make this problem disappear. I'm also willing to install another Linux distro if that one will work.

thanks

- Greg Scott

[D. Greg Scott]

It seems HP really means it in this case with the list of supported OS's. From RedHat, RHEL 4 and RHEL 5 are supported and that's it. No mention of any of the Fedora releases.

Well, this makes sense - I would not expect HP to test any of the free Linux releases.

So last night, I tried fc8 with no luck. I downloaded the latest firmware maintenance CD, version 8.10, and put in the updates, still no good. And I tried fc9 again, this time with a simpler partition layout, and still no good.

This morning, I carved out an 8GB partition and installed Windows Server 2003R2. This installed and booted just fine.

So the problem must be that Fedora never put in what it needed to boot this box with the embedded SATA controller.

bummer

- Greg Scott

[James ~ Happy Dude]

Well Greg, You said it !

However, you may try installing it WITHOUT (H/w)RAID... & "IF" it boots fine, you may use the SOFTWARE RAID.

See if this works out.
:)

Regards,

[D. Greg Scott]

Well, it turns out that RHEL5 does not boot either. The symptoms are a little bit different than fc9. With RHEL5, it says booting from drive C, then the next line says failed to boot from the hard drive, then it halts.

HP has a SATA controller firmware update, but this update seems to be for the 8 port SATA controller and not the 6 port one I have, so it doesn't install.

So now I learned the supported OS doesn't boot either. very frustrating!

- Greg