ProLiant DL580 G5 no disk for installing OS

[Maik2]

Hello Community!

I am new here and also new to the server world and recently I got a DL580 G5 and it came with an SSD that has ESXi installed. I wanted to install RHEL 8.6 on this machine, so i inserted my empty 600GB SAS HDD and started the installation procedure. But I was not able to choose any disk for the installation. I was told that I have to get some array drivers for the P400 SAS-Card. I have a few beginner's questions:

1. How do i install those drivers (USB-Stick? How do I get it bootable only with those drivers?)?
2. What can go wrong?
3. Where exactly do I get those drivers?

Thank you for your efforts and best regards,

Maik

[Bunsol]

Rhel 8.6 isnt support on the DL580 G5. Please see below link for certified OS for this server:-
https://techlibrary.hpe.com/us/en/enterprise/servers/supportmatrix/exceptions/rhel_exceptions.aspx

DL580 G5

RHEL 5.1 RHEL 4.5 6-Core/4-Core Intel®, Xeon®, Processor 7400 Series RHEL 5.2 1 RHEL 4.7

Servers prior to Gen8 used smart start CD for assisted installation of Operating system as it contains the drivers. If you are looking to install the supported Operating system then you can try using the Smart start CD for installation:-

https://support.hpe.com/connect/s/softwaredetails?language=en_US&softwareId=MTX_2e6c41afdb8c4c0d9bffce484c&tab=Installation+Instructions

Hope this helps.

[Maik2]

Hi Bunsol,

thanks for your help, it got me a step further, but only one step...
I created a SmartStart USB and there in the menu the supported OS are Microsoft products only, not one Linux distro... I have RHEL 5.1 as recommended and I used Unetbootin for making it a bootable USB-Stick. But when asked for the source where the OS is located I couldn't pick "USB Stick", just things like CD, Ftp, NFS, etc.

Is there another program for making bootable RHEL-Sticks?

Btw: Even in the RHEL 5.1-Menu it said there are no HDDs, so I can see the HDDs in the P400-Bios and they are ok, but I can't see them when trying to install a OS. Do you have any advice?

Thanks in advance!

Maik

[Bunsol]

You can try using below utility to make it bootable:-

https://support.hpe.com/connect/s/softwaredetails?language=en_US&softwareId=MTX_360731071b404454b454390208&tab=Installation+Instructions

Also the controller should have picked up the drives in  Smart Start CD.

You can try manual installation and inject the driver and check:_
https://support.hpe.com/connect/s/softwaredetails?language=en_US&softwareId=MTX_2a42272365b249f79360d907f8

If this also does not work then we would recommend you to log a support ticket as it might need remote assistance to fix this.

[pchops]

FYI: the DL580 G5 is Red Hat certified for RHEL 5 (depending on your CPU type) and RHEL 6 -- see the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog for the DL580 G5

I have RHEL 5.1 as recommended and I used Unetbootin for making it a bootable USB-Stick. But when asked for the source where the OS is located I couldn't pick "USB Stick", just things like CD, Ftp, NFS, etc.

In the RHEL 5.1 installer, it won't show a "USB Stick" for a source, but instead a USB stick will show up in the "Hard drive" category as a "SCSI" hard drive ("sd"), ie:

 

 In the above example, the USB key shows up as "sda" (with "/dev/sda1" being the FAT32 file system on MBR partition 1). Also, as shown in the above screenshot, the RHEL 5.1 installer expects to be able to loopback mount "CD (iso9660) images" of the install CD/DVDs when using a "hard drive" as the OS source. However, "UNetbootin" will take the source ISO image and unpack it onto the USB key, which is fine for probably most distros, but not RHEL 5.1. If you are using "UNetbootin", there are some additional caveats with the way it operates, at least when I've used it. First of all, it does not format the USB key, but just adds SYSLINUX and the ISO contents to an existing USB key. Again, this is probably fine in most instances, but RHEL 5.1 seems a bit picky. What worked for me was to first format the USB key using a single partition with a FAT32 file system (RHEL 5.1 does not support exFAT). NOTE that preparing the USB key in this fashion under Windows seems to be problematic with certain USB keys when reading their partition tables under Linux, so it is better to perform those tasks under Linux, if possible.

Then, from the RHEL 5.1 DVD, extract the file "diskboot.img" from the "images" directory and use this file as the "Diskimage" type "floppy" in "UNetbootin". After "UNetbootin" completes, then copy the ISO image of the RHEL 5.1 install DVD to the USB key, but as an entire file, without extracting it. This allows the system to boot from the USB key and also allows the installer to locate the install ISO.

Is there another program for making bootable RHEL-Sticks?

There are a lot of different utilities for doing this, but "UNetbootin" should work if you follow the above guidelines.

Btw: Even in the RHEL 5.1-Menu it said there are no HDDs, so I can see the HDDs in the P400-Bios and they are ok, but I can't see them when trying to install a OS. Do you have any advice?

If you are booting from a USB key and there are no HDDs showing up in the RHEL 5.1 menu (assuming the "menu" is the "Installation Method" menu shown above), then there could be a few reasons. If the USB key does not show up as an "sd" hard drive, then it is most likely that the RHEL installer does not recognize its file system or partition table. If you have configured your hard drive as a logical drive in the P400 BIOS (aka "ORCA"), then the installer should detect it as a "cciss" device. RHEL 5.1 already has the driver for this, and you should see it being loaded dueing the installer initialization, ie:

However, if there is no partition table on the P400 logical drive, then it won't be presented in the "Installation Method" menu, because at this point in the installer, it is just looking for a device that contains the ISO image file. In this case, once the installer finds the OS source ISO image, and launches "Anaconda", you'll see a message similar to:

There are additional caveats when installing RHEL 5.1 from a USB key, for example:

- be sure to deselect the USB key as a target device for the OS:

 - when you get to the GRUB selection screens, if the default installer only shows the USB key (ie: "/dev/sda") as the boot loader target, be sure to select the "Configure advanced boot loader options" checkbox:

- select the P400 logical drive as the GRUB target, but also click on the "Change Drive Order" button and put the P400 logical drive first:

 

[Maik2 · Accepted solution]

Hi guys,

thank you for your information! But I switched to Ubuntu 20.04 and the installation went absolutely flawless, so I will stick to that.

Cheers,

Maik

[Sunitha_Mod]

@Maik2

Hello Maik, 

We are glad to know the problem has been resolved and thank you for keeping us updated.