Virtual Floppy refuses to work after a reboot

[Alain Van de Voorde]

Hello,

I'm installing some HP DL380 G4 servers using ILO with firmware version 1.80 and higher. When I use Virtual Media - Virtual Floppy, I always have to disconnect and connect again after a server reboot, otherwise it tries to read from the floppy one time and stops to continue.

Although I already have installed the same kind of servers before without this problem. What can be the reason ? The firmware update ? My java client software has not been changed.

[David Claypool]

Which OS and version are you installing?

[Alain Van de Voorde]

My aim is to install Win2003, but it has nothing to do with it. I always start the servers with a special prepared Win98 boot diskette. This boot diskette prepares the volumes, system partition, starts the installation of Win2003, ...

[John Wonsik]

I am having the same issues with 2 brand new DL380 G4 servers. We use Altiris to deploy the server OS's and use a generic Windows 98 boot diskette image to start the process. We have been using the same image file for the past server builds (About 200 servers) and never had these issues. When the server initially boots, the virtual floppy works fine, after the next reboot the server hangs and the F9 and F10 prompts are never displayed during the POST. If I detach the virtual media, cancel the PIXE boot and re-attach the virtual media, the process will continue just fine until the server goes through another full reboot. The same detach and re-attach has to be done again for the virtual media to be recognized. We do most of our builds remotely and this will greatly affect our process.

[André van Dijken]

Are you using iLO High Performance Mouse?

I discovered that boot from virtual floppy doesn't work if High performance mouse is activated. Although the floppy is correctly functioning in Windows, it doesn't boot. If you want to activate high performance mouse while a virtual floppy is connected, a message appear that you should first disconnect you're virtual floppy. So there are some links about using virtual floppy and high performance mouse.

I discovered this on a bl20p-iLO with firmware 1.82.

[Alain Van de Voorde]

I recently installed a HP DL380 G4 server using ILO firmware version 1.62 (5/08/2004). Installing the server using a virtual floppy, I had not any connect-disconnect problem after a reboot. The problem doesn't depend of the type of server or the java client software.

So, my conclusion is that starting from ILO firmware version 1.80 or before (but later then v1.62) virtual floppy doesn't work fine after a reboot of the server. This connect-disconnect problem is very annoying.

[John Wonsik]

Alain,

Thanks for the info regarding the ILO High Performance mouse and its effect on the floppy. It does seem like there is an issue with the ILO firmware causing the virtual floppy drive not to function. I have not downgraded the firmware as you have, but it looks like your testing with an earlier version has solved your issue. I guess I will have to wait until HP comes out with a fix. My company upgrades all the firmware levels to the current so it would not make sense to downgrade. We have pushed out about 50 servers since this issue was seen so it would easier to roll out a fix when it is available.

[Chip Liczwek]

Here is what we found. André van Dijken was exactly right. The iLO High Performance Mouse box was checked. Unchecking this and rebooting the system cleared the boot from floppy issue. We are using Frmware 1.82.

[acartes]

The high-performance mouse connects to the system as a virtual USB device. So does virtual media. The trouble comes in because all of these devices share the same USB connection. You should be able to un-check the high performance mouse in the remote console window, however, this has the side-effect of mouse acceleration woes.

FYI: iLO 2 solves this problem differently- the remote console keyboard, mouse and virtual media share independent virtual USB connections so they do not interact as in iLO.