Debian,Grub and PE430SC

[Greg Gilmour]

> Hi,
> I'm having a hard time trying to install Debian Sarge.
> The server is a PowerEdge 430SC, 1 scsi disk, no sata
> disks.
> The problem is that it gets stuck in a 50% progress when
> I try to install grub. Screen Message is "Executing grub-install (hd0)"
> and in console messages there is this message: "Probing devices to
> guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time."
> Indeed it takes a loooong time, in fact, it never continues.
> I have no clue about what to do.
> Could anybody give me a hand.
> Thank you very much in advance.
> Regards,
> Enric.

Hi Enric,

I basically had a similar setup, except I used the built-in SATA
controller (Intel ICH7) and configured boot-on-RAID with two Seagate 250
GB disks.  I used Kenshi's guide [0] to get the base system installed
and then bits and pieces of a CompSoc [1] article to get boot-on-RAID
working.  I initially wanted LILO for the boot loader (call me old
school, I guess), but ended up going with GRUB and never really ran into
a problem.  When it seems to hang, can you switch to another vtty and
see if it is spitting out any errors (usually Alt+F4, IIRC)?  You might
also want to see about following the guide at [0] to see if that custom
installer works for you any better than the default sarge install image.
If you need a copy of my kernel config (as Kenshi's kernel does not have
RAID1 support compiled into the kernel), let me know.

[0] http://kmuto.jp/b.cgi/2006/03/
[1] http://compsoc.tardis.ed.ac.uk/DebianSargeOnDellPowerEdgeSC430

--
~~~~~~~~
- greg
"hrmmm - a Beowulf cluster of Dreamcasts and PS2s..."
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