Install & Boot from CERC ATA100 with Debian

[Geoffrey J. Krapf]

Hi all,

I've got a PowerEdge 600SC with the CERC ATA100/4CH IDE RAID controller.
Attached to the controller are two 40 GB IDE drives in a single mirrored
logical drive.  They're the only drives in the system, and thus I must
boot from them.  This card uses the megaraid driver.

I'm using Debian (Woody) and got it to install using the bf24 image
(standard 2.4.18-bf2.4 kernel) and supplying the megaraid.o driver from a
floppy.  The module was loaded, the controller detected, the drive
partitioned, base image installed, etc. etc.  All looked good until I
rebooted for the base config step.

When I rebooted, I couldn't get a LILO prompt or any indication of a
problem.  The system simply stopped after the RAID card finished its
self-check/detection phase, at the point where normally you'd see a LILO
prompt or the dmesg output or -something-.   The hard drives made that
short, low-pitched noise like they were about to start booting, but then
nothing.   Not even any BIOS-level error message.

I checked BIOS options, and indeed, I had the add-in RAID device specified
as the boot device.  I tried the installation again, but nothing changed.

Any suggestions?   Thanks in advance!

- Geoff Krapf
- geoffx at ccs.neu.edu