Linux RHEL 4 on IBM x346
 

Hi there,

Having real difficulties installing Linux RedHat Enterprise 4 on an IBM x346 server.

The server is multiprocessor, has an additional IBM ServeRAID 6M card located in PCI slot 3. ServeRAID detects the disks and I have configured them to use RAID 5.

I put the RedHat installation disk into the server, and it boots from CD. I hit enter at the boot prompt, and it starts the install process OK.

It proceeds to:

Loading ips driver...

and then goes to:

Loading ips driver... Disabling IRQ #3

It then takes a while to do this, and eventually asks me if I want to check the media. I choose not to, since I've already done it recently.

I'm then shown another screen saying:

No hard disks have been found. You probably need to manually select device drivers for the installation to suceed. Would you like to select these drivers now?

If I choose yes, I can choose from a list (my driver for IBM ServeRAID 6M doesn't appear here), or I can hit F2 to load a driver from a floppy disk. Neither of these approaches is successful.

I don't know what to do next. Anyone have any ideas?

Please help, this is driving me nuts! I don't know whether it is a hardware or software problem. I'm going with software, since the ServeRAID configuration program provided by IBM sees the drives and configures them properly.

Thanks!

Have you tried loading RHEL3? as this will potentially narrow down your problem. In the interests of saving time you are proably best off logging a call with IBM and RedHat. IBM have a Linux support department so if you are persistent enough they will probably get you an answer....

same problem
 

Getting the same error with raid.

Tried RHEL3 update4 and it stops reading the cd after you switch to cd2. Had IBM swap cdrom drive to no avail.

Tried RHEL3 (no update) and it loaded but had wrong NIC driver so i couldnt get online anyways

WinXP loads fine

so confusing!

Im guessing linux doesnt have drivers for your specific RAID controller, if you know what type of controller card you have try looking for appropriate drivers, I had a simmilar problem which was resolved by loading the megaraid drivers, which I later compiled into the kernel.

Same problem... solution?
 

I'm encountered exactly the same problem with RH ES 4.0 and the ServerRaid 6M controller. Has anyone found a solution to this problem? The only thing I can figure is to grab the ips drivers from the ServerRaid CD and try to compile them with the 4.0 kernel. I've tried that, but got nowhere with it. Any help is appreciated.

Had the same problem (disk not found) with RHEL3 until we tried using update 5 - and everything worked just fine! Seems the ServeRAID drivers are not quite up to scratch in the stock kernel, but the updated modules fixed it.

Haven't tried RHEL4 yet.

I had the same pb, I had to install the RHEL 3 Q4, and tape linux dd to add manually the driver found on the IBM CDROM or site.
The driver doesn't work on the RHEL 4.
IBM told me that they will correct this bug next weeks (or months???).
Just work on the RHEL 3Q4 if you have x346

Sorry about digging up an old thread, but was hoping maybe someone has found a solution to this that was not posted here.

As of today I am still experiencing the same issue with Linux ES 4 on IBM's xSeries 346

Using ServeRaid 6M with Bios 6.10.24
xSeries Bios 1.10
6M driver for ServeRaid 6M 39y4945.exe released 7/19/05

1. always upgade your controller firmware to the latest version
2. DON'T use RHEL AS3, U4(or below) and RHEL AS 4U1(or below).
3. make sure you've made the right diskettes that support your raid adapter (for x86 or x86_64 ?)
4. check the support matrix out from vendor's website.

Updated the ServeRaid 6M firmware to 7.12 which in the change history states changes for new operating systems Linux AS/ES/WS 4.

Searching Adaptec's website does not have any newier drivers since 2003 for the 2300S series of Raid controlers. The card is stamped with Adaptec 3225S

The solution is as baffling as it is simple. It is true that you do need to update the bios of the ServeRaid 6M card to the newest firmware and I would recommend updating the motherboard bio's while you’re at it. But the solution is simply as moving the ServeRaid card from PCIx 3 to PCIx 4.

As soon as this was performed the drivers where able to disable the IRQ with just flashing the disabling IRC message screen instead of seemly hanging there until a time out is reached. Linux Red Hat Enterprise 4 already has a functional driver on the disk so no needing to load your own drivers.

The only indication that this might have been a problem was in the motherboard bios update change log. Three revisions ago they fixed an issue with some PCI cards not working correctly in PCIx 3.

For IBM, pls forget about them, their support will just come onsite and claim that their HW is working fine without problem...

And yes, you need to put your PCI from slot 3 to 4 and then select in BIOS the boot (device ?) on PCI 4 (I forgot the exact name).

While don't be too happy about that. I have finally able to setup RHEL 3 update 4 on my server and it is really unstable (crashed randomly and frequently). Then I have finally upgraded to update 5 and the problem seems to have gone for long but unfortunately we discovered that the server have serious disk corrupt problem with their new SAN DS400. We still don't know what had happened.

BTW, you can always check out the latest driver from IBM regarding serveRAID over
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...id=MIGR-495PES

BTW, One of our server is attaching a SCSI Tape Library 3581 and the tape driver stopped from working after months of deployment and eventually have crashed !

I truely and highly suspect that RHEL is not working properly with IBM em64T series of machine. I know that I should log a call with RedHat but these kind of sudden crash is difficult to trace and it really takes time...

Anyone have successfully setup RHEL (3 or 4) on x346 and runs without problem for months ? Can you share your experience and version of kernel with us ?

(PS, this x346 can work with a limited number of kernels only and I tried to get it working OK on 2.4.21-32.0.1 only, all other crashed either immediately after boot or irregularly)

We have a x346 8840-11Y running
Scientific Linux CERN Release 3.0.6 (SL)
-- (This comes from RHEL)
running kernel:
2.4.21-37.EL.XFSsmp

This hw stays up&running with (almost) no problems like crashes or similar disaters. It mainly performs web/mysql/php tasks, with quite heavy load.

Anyone has been able to "smoothly" run a 2.6.x kernel on this hw? I strongly would like to run it on this hardware.

I tried last knoppix live-cd (5.0.1, kernel 2.6.17). I told to load entire cd in ram (i have 2Gb ram). The machine boots regurarly and finally, after loading KDE it crashes and resets to poweron bios. After that, the red "!" led is on, and the legend says: CPU fault.

I detach power, wait 2 mins, and after that it starts, with no red led ON. I booted Knoppix once more, but without loading in ram. It runs smoothly, network card is detected, but no raid/scsi. On the ibm driver matrix i only can find binary or src modules only for 2.4.x kernels and specific distros (es. rhel3).

Has some guru out there found a way to run a 2.6 kernel ?

This is quite simple actually, RHEL won't install because no logical drives are set up on the RAID device. Download the ServerGuide software for your machine and burn the .iso to a disk. Insert the disk and follow the instructions to create logical drives. Restart with the RHEL disks in and away you go.

Here's a link as of 9/19/06 http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview...&cc=us&lang=en

or you can go to www.ibm.com/support/us and type in ServerGuide into the search box and look for the link for your x346 or whatever server you have. You should find the ServerGuide software there.



Once the logical drives are set up, RHEL will install without any complaints. I've installed 4U4 and 4U3 with no problems.

Hi,

I am succesfully using Redhat EL4 update 4 and update 6 x86-64 on IBM x346.

In the past I have run on RHELWS3.U3, U4, and U6.

The key here is to do what the poster above me have said. Flash everything on the x346 to the latest levels, BIOS, RAID, BMC, etc...

Then boot of the serveraid support cd. It will allow you to create logical devices i.e. hard drives that can be seen by the O/S.

Next determine if your prefered version of linux has the certified IBM drivers included (e.g. IPS for the internal ServerRAID 7k etc), then dd a floppy with that driver on.

Then boot off linux and at the prompt type: linux dd

This will force linux to prompt for your driver disk. Then it will find the hard drives (logical devices that you created in the serveraid support cd environment.)

You will also see the RAID controllers reporting what logical devices are present when the system POST's.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,

Stvy