debian install fails with DL360 Gen8

[mrFatpooh]

I am trying to install a couple of DL360 Gen 8 Servers with Debian 6.0.6.

The install fails, it starts ok but then in tries to detect and mount the CDROM and fails. 

Which is odd because its booting from the same CDROM. 

Any ideas how to get over this ?

[Matti_Kurkela]

> ...tries to detect and mount the CDROM and fails. 

> Which is odd because its booting from the same CDROM.

When the bootloader runs, the low-level hardware is being controlled by the system BIOS. The BIOS comes with the hardware and is tailored for it.

But after the kernel and the initrd have been loaded, full control is transferred to the Linux kernel. Like any modern OS, it is either 32- or 64-bit code, so it cannot use the legacy 16-bit BIOS routines efficiently: it has to take control of the hardware using its own drivers.

These days, much of the Linux hardware autodetection is based on identification strings embedded in various kernel modules. If the various PCI/USB/whatever hardware identifiers of any given device match the identification strings in one of the available modules, that module will be loaded... and it should be able to run the device. But if the hardware is newer than the kernel version used, the identifiers used in the new hardware might not be included in the modules' identification strings, even if the appropriate driver could in fact run the device without any other modifications. The kernel developers can't really see the future, you know.

Debian 6.0.6 is the current "stable" version of Debian, and it is not exactly known for its up-to-the-minute hardware support. You might want to boot the system using one of the HP-supported operating systems (or even just the installer for one), or a Live CD of some other distribution with a newer kernel. Then look at the modules it loads for your server, and identify the driver(s) responsible for running the CDROM drive and the SATA/SAS/whatever controller the drive is connected to.

Then try loading those same modules within the Debian installer. If that does not help, you may have to create a customized Debian installation disc with an updated kernel. Once upon a time, many Debian versions ago, I did something like that, but I think the methods used back then are now way out of date.

This page seems to contain some clues about the current methods for such a task, but it assumes you're already pretty familiar with Debian and compiling custom kernels, and that you already have another Debian system on which you can compile stuff:

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Modify/CustomKernel

[Goran Koruga]

Hello.

Debian installer shall show you more details on tty3 and tty4 so switch there and have a look.

You can also get a shell to investigate the issue on tty2.  Try using expert mode and see if you can retry detecting CD-ROM step to catch the messages on tty3/4 (perhaps this is not needed if it hasn't scrolled off yet in regular mode).

Regards,

Goran

[mrFatpooh]

done a bit more research and seems you need to make your own kernel with HPSA drivers, which seems more hasle than its worth really especially in terms of maintenance. 

i will try Centos or Ubuntu instead.

[JukkaInkeri]

Debian 7.0 Beta is easy, it has builtin support for new hpsa. Ex. P420i.

I also done 6.0.6 install, not so easy. But it's possible.

My readme + hpsa.ko. Include compiled hpsa.ko for amd64 kernel.