CD-R / CD-RW Media used to boot HP-UX

[Stephen Keane]

I've been spending a lot of time recently creating bootable CDs to boot HP Workstations/Servers from. The boot process itself is reliable, but the HP machines do seem to be VERY particular about the manufacturer/version of the CD media I use. Some manufacturer's CD media will not work at all, other are fine.

There doesn't seem to be any obvious pattern, cheap media works just as well as expensive media. Some CD-RWs work better than some CD-Rs etc.

Is there a list anywhere of the specification for the media itself used in booting a HP box?

Perhaps certain types of dye aren't supported? Or certain speeds?

[Torsten.]

Hi,

I burned many different CDs to boot different servers from - without any problems.

[goldboy]

I had a few problems in the past with burned CD's and was recomanded to use NERO as the cd burning software, the other path to go was to burn the cd's on slow speed.
It resolved my issues hope it works for you.

Tal

[Bill Hassell]

HP-UX doesn't care at all about media. You CDROM drive is the culprit. There are literally hundreds of CDROM drives and firmware versions out there and the older the CDROM, the worse it's compatibility will be with writable media. CD-R will be the most compatible although some colors (blue, green, gold, silver, even black) will affect compatibility. CD-RW will be the least compatible. You'll likely find that near-silver CDs will be more compatible. Old servers and workstations OEM'ed a Toshiba CDROM drive (3000 series) and might be a 3101, 3201, 3301, 3401, etc) but finding out what media will work with such old equipment is only possible through testing. I'm sure you may have found compatibility problems with CD-RW in your car stereo or home stereo...same problem.

[Torsten.]

Most of the times you must use special settings, like this:

NOTE: Blocksize (bs) must be 2k

see as an example:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=de&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=2512037&swItem=PF-CARIW4412&prodNameId=86772&swEnvOID=7&swLang=13&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=0

[Stephen Keane]

Well technically speaking, they're not my CD-ROM drives, they came with the HP boxes :)

I've found by trial and error that (for example) TuffDisc 12x CD-RW are very reliable, whereas DataWrite CD-R aren't.

I take you point though Bill, just wondered if there was a table anywhere to take some of the work out of it. We need to advise a customer you see.