installing SUSE Linux on proliant DL380 G6

[Douglas McIntosh]

Hi,
I am trying to install SUSE Linux onto a HP proliant DL380 G6 server. When I use the SmartStart CD that came with the unit, SUSE Linux is not offered as a possible O/S on the O/S install help page.

When I reboot with the SLSE 10 installation dvd in the DVD drive, the welocme screen comes up, and if I select 'Installation', it begins installation and after several minutes a red window pops up and says the following:

"Could not find the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Installation Disk"
"Activating manual setup program"

When I examine the virtual window that shows progress, it appears that it has loaded many of the modules, and is looking for the SLES 10 disk, and fails. If I continue with the manual loader, the CD can no longer be found to load from.

Here are the final messages:
>>
Hardawre probing finished
There seems to be no floppy disk
got info from cmdline
Ok, that seems to have worked. :-)
Ok, that seems to have worked. :-)
Ok, that seems to have worked. :-)
Ok, that seems to have worked. :-)
Ok, that seems to have worked. :-)
Ok, that seems to have worked. :-)
Looking for a SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 CD...
Ok, that didn't work; see if we can activate another storage device...
no other storage device found; giving up.
automatic setup not possible
<<

A few things I have done already:

I have used the SmartStart CD to configure the Array controller with 4 arrays each with 1 logical drive.

I have used the Firmware maintenance disk that came with the unit to update the firmware. (ver 8.40)

I have tried using the other installation selections with the same result.

note that the DVD drive seems to be fine until the SLES moduels are loaded. (maybe an incompatible DVD driver?)


Any ideas?

Thanks
DOug

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

They pulled the Linux install helper off the CD with the G4 server line.

Boot off your choice of Linux distribution making sure its on the PSP supported list.

Install PSP after the install is done.

SEP

[Douglas McIntosh]

Thanks for the reply.

Therein lies the problem. When I boot the Linux, it stops during the initialization because it can't find the DVD drive anymore, after using it to find everything else to get that far. I can't get to a point where I can load the PSP.

Doug

[emha_1]

hi,

I do not have experience with installing SLES-10, but rather with previous versions.
there had been an option on some of very first screens to load further optional modules (drivers) specific for your HW that are not included in DVD boot initramdisk.
probably there is not driver included in initramdisk that would recognize your DVD drive. they may be additional modules available directly on your installation DVD or you may need to download them somewhere from HP website.

emha.

[Douglas McIntosh]

emha,

Yes, I think you are right. There is an option to specify that you want to load drivers at initialization time, and it does stop and ask you to put in a disk. But, I cannot seem to find a driver anywhere to load. There is a firmware maintenance CD included with the unit, but that does not have drivers on it.

Thanks for the reply.

Doug

[emha_1]

in SLES-7/8 additional modules weren't directly accesible/readable from CD but they were inside floppy disk images. try to look for (I guess) *.bin or *.img files of size aprox 1.44M

emha.

[Matt Palmer_2]

Hi,

have you done a media check of the DVD? Also, if you have access to another machine/http,etc you could mount the DVD ISO file on the loopback interface of that machine, and do the install to the DL over HTTP. - Just to see if it cures the problem.


regards

Matt

[Sam Harbaugh]

I am having the exact same problem on a brand new DL 380 G6, with SUSE 10.

I am sure the CD media is good as last week I used to install on Dell server no problem.

Also if I put the CD in my laptop and use the virtual media of iLO2 the install will start correctly. That may be my next choice, but that is not a good option going forward in production.

Any ideas?