Wednesday, July 5, 2006

Ways not to install Proliant ML330 G2

This is such a hack on how to get things going I don't even want to admit it but I also don't want to forget in case I need to do it again.

(Way back in the beginning, I figured out that getting the LSI Logic ATA raid controller -- megaide was going to be a pain.  So I formated the drives under the <ctrl-a> scsi bios to be independent.  I figured, I can always do a software raid later, if I need to.)

I installed some form of Debian on this box 1.5 years ago and I can't quite remember what I did.  I think I started with Debian 3.01 (sarge?) installer and ran it with the expert boot option.  Then when it tried to autodiscover the devices I would deselect the ide-cdrom device the first time through (it is the ide- that is listed last)  The next time through I would select the last module and go from there.

This time I installed Ubuntu's Breezy like a regular system but on reboot the system would tell me that it couldn't find /dev/hda1.  If you run 'cat /proc/partitions' you should see what partitions are available, mine was obviously installed on /dev/hde1.  Now 'mount /dev/hde1 /mnt' to temporarily get access to the root partition.  If you push on, you can edit the /etc/fstab file from the busybox prompt using 'sed -i.bak s/hda1/hde1/ /mnt/etc/fstab' and 'sed -i.bak s/hda1/hde1/ /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst'

I wasn't able to boot correctly without manually editing the grub on the fly using ESC and 'e' on the line with the /dev/hda1.  After pressing enter to commit the grub change, you will need to use the 'b' option to boot.  It took a long while for grub to hand off from initrd to hde but it eventually worked (I thought that I should have modified the hd(0,0) to hd(5,0) but grub failed.  Tab completion in grub is great)

I ran 'sed -i.bak s/breezy/dapper/ /etc/apt/sources.list' after getting a decent boot.  'sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' and sat back.  While waiting, I found from /var/log/dmesg that my cdrom was /dev/hda (go figure) and the extra 6 Gb drive I stuck on a IDE channel for "ease of booting" was /dev/hdc.  I ended up not using the /dev/hdc drive.

Now I'm going to look for an easy way to call the LAMP server installation system.  I thought it would be available as a task but I'm not finding it.

I'll post my lshw here to give others an idea of the hardware I'm using.

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