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Re: Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

 
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Robert Renstrom
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Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

I├в m trying to install Red Hat 9 on a Compaq Proliant 5000R ( I know, like resurecting a dinosaur - but it's what we have), dual 200 mhz pentium pros, 262+M of memory, SMART 2P Array Controller, (5) 4.3 G drives, bios level E16 (4/30/99). The SMART 2P Array controller is set to boot first. I have maintained the Compaq system partition and followed the guidelines of the ├в COMPAQ Integration Note: Implementing Red Hat Linux 6.1 on CompaqProLiant Servers.├в

I have used SMART START 5.0, 4.8, 4.6, 4.21 and have set the OS to Linux or Unixware 2.1 (per the Integration Note).

I have tried to partition it with Partition Magic 5.0 for a 2nd Primary Active partition (with the Compaq dianostics on the first) and formatted it with Ext2 - in each of the separate permutations above and I still get errors very similar (hard drive designations change from hda to sda to c0D0...)

I've had Red Hat 8 running on it for the past year but one of my trainees was working on it and we lost the entire configuration.

I have tried to put "root=/dev/sda2" as the boot option but get a similar error to the below listed error:

VFS: Can├в t open root device ├в hda2├в or 03:02
Please append a correct ├в root=├в boot option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount rout fs on 03:02

Any ideas (besides using it to anchor aircraft carriers) to help me get it running would be app
10 REPLIES 10
Stuart Browne
Honored Contributor

Re: Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

If it was a standard RH8 installation (i.e. it parted up boot/root/home/etc.), then the Root partition won't be the first partition, it'll be the second.

/dev/sda1 will be the compaq partition
/dev/sda2 will be /boot/
/dev/sda3 I would then assume would be /root/

Of course, without getting into the system, this makes life difficult to confirm.

You're topic says you are trying to install RH9, but the content of your message seems like you're trying to recover the RH8 (or an already installed RH9) installation.

Umm, huh?

If it's already installed, use the RH9 recovery mode (rescue) to see what you can see about the filesystem layout (use 'sfdisk -l' if you can, otherwise walk through normal linux 'fdisk').
One long-haired git at your service...
Robert Renstrom
New Member

Re: Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

Stuart,
Thanks for your quick reply. I had it running on RH8 but in the interim, since the configuration was damaged, it has been put to other uses so the RH8 installation has been wiped. I have just started trying to put it back into production recently and wanted to use the updated version of RH9. I know that the 4500's and 5000's have been problematic when it comes to Linux (and FreeBSD - according to one of our sysadmins) so I was trying to see if there was anything that I was overlooking. The installs in the past have been very straightforward - parted along the lines you had described. I'll try using /dev/sda3 for the boot option with the different SMART START CD's that I had listed.

Thanks Again!
Stuart Browne
Honored Contributor

Re: Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

The issue I had is that you didn't actually show any failures during the install, but sometime after.

Where is it falling ass-over?

You should be doing the partitioning within the RH install as far as I'm aware. The older smart-start's probably have issues with the newer RH dists though.
One long-haired git at your service...
Stuart Browne
Honored Contributor

Re: Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

(oh, forgot to mention.. I've never actually used the SmartStart CD's to install RH on any Compaq of HP machine)

0pts.
One long-haired git at your service...
Robert Renstrom
New Member

Re: Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

The error message that I listed was during the very first part of the install before I could partition. It was right after the initial RH install screen.
Stuart Browne
Honored Contributor

Re: Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

My apologies, the apostraphies (') were garbled, couldn't make sense of it.

Ok. This would mean that it cannot mount the files systems off the first IDE drive (hda), which I would assume is the IDE CDROM at this point (as you didn't mention any other IDE drives).

Check the media (there's a 'mediatest' option that you can use), make sure it's happy.

If the media is good, then try the RH8 disks again. RH9 has some strange issues with various CDROM drives, especially in the Compaq world (but I've not heard of issues with older hardware, only the newer).
One long-haired git at your service...
Robert Renstrom
New Member

Re: Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

Sorry I also failed to mention that I had the server configured for Raid 5. MSDOS seems to work on install. If I can get Win2k installed is there a way to install RH over it? I really do think there is something with the array controllers that I'm missing...despite following the attached doc.

Thanks again!
Stuart Browne
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear as if the array is the issue (as you mentioned earlier, this comes up as a standard SCSI disk (/dev/sda)).

The error shown above is having issues talking to an IDE drive of some description (/dev/hda).

Check the media, or try RH8 again.
One long-haired git at your service...
Robert Renstrom
New Member

Re: Red Hat 9 Installation on Proliant 5000r

Stuart,
Thanks for all your help. I remembered a memory problem that Linux has with the Compaq 4500's and 5000's and did a search on a part of the solution that I recalled from years past. At the install "boot prompt" type "linux mem=exactmap mem=640K@0 mem=255M@1M." Taking your advice, but going back a few versions earlier (RH7.2) I used the memory work-around and it is in the process of installing as we "speak." I would still like to use RH9 for all the enhancements, especially the extended attributes and the ACL's that are available. Any suggestions on the upgrade route?

Thanks Again!

Bob Renstrom