No F8 prompt to enter ORCA in dl380 g6 with p410i

[anthony11]

<quote>controller/cache could be at fault if you are unable to enter bios of the controller</quote>

Occurrence on multiple factory-fresh machines makes that unlikely.

[quote]Does the problem still occur when you press F8 on the local keyboard?[/quote]

This is a rackmount DL380.  It's also There is no local keyboard.  Running a USB cable 2200+ miles for a keyboard really isn't a viable option, especially across an ocean.  These are supposed to be enterprise-class systems.  This is supposed to work.  Sun / Oracle hardware with LSI HBA's has no problem working over a normal serial console.

[Jimmy Vance]

Was just trying to narrow down what might be the issue. ProLiants do in fact work via serial console for RBSU and ORCA related tasks.

[anthony11]

<quote> ProLiants do in fact work via serial console for RBSU and ORCA related tasks.</quote>

... after a fashion.

o Reliance on non-ASCII function keys to get in, multi-char equivalents are sometimes advertised, sometimes not.  Timing is extremely picky.  Sun hardware uses a single character.  ^C gets into the LSI HBA utility.  ^N specifies network boot.

o G6 and G7 systems usually only require 2-3 attempts to get into ORCA by hitting ESC 8 at exactly the right time and with exactly the right gap between the two chars.  G8 systems ignore it entirely - even on the legacy redirected video console.  The only way to configure mirroring for a boot volume before OS installation is to fire up the redirected video console and boot the offline ACU .ISO using media redirection, which itself requires MSIE running in MS Windows on a virtual machine.  Once the offline ACU is booted, it displays a double cursor that makes operation awkward.

o G8 systems ship with HBA FBWC unconfigured, which can only be fixed with the offline ACU.

o DL580G7 systems force the console to 115200 bps when PXE booting.  This bug has been reported to HP multiple times, with no action.

o RBSU forces a CLI interface, not a menu like *everyone* else offers.  The CLI interface sucks in that one has to manually type the multi-word uppercase commands in full every time -- cut/paste doesnt work

o The iLO config utility requires F10 to save changes.  F10 can't be entered over a serial console.

[ExcelR]

Had this same issue.  Was not able to update firmware.  (Thats my my new server is a R630 from Dell).

Turns out one of the drives was too new for the controller.  When this drive was removed I received the F8 prompt like normal.

Hope this helps.