Debian and Poweredge 2900

[Elliot Fuller]

I am trying to install Debian Sarge on a Poweredge 2900. I have a 8  
drives in a RAID 5 array. I chose Debian because I am familiar with  
Debian based distributions, and Debian Sarge seems to be the only non- 
proprietary linux distribution/version that people have been getting  
OMSA to work on. The standard Debian installer does not come with  
RAID support, or with support for the latest Broadcom ethernet  
drivers. Thus, I tried looking for Debian install images rolled with  
RAID support, etc.. The Dell Linux site seems to have a long list of  
broken links to these kinds of install images. I was very disappointed.

I am interested in any information/links about Debian install images  
that work with Poweredge servers (specifically 2900 series). Any  
success stories?

Also, Ubuntu (based on Debian of course) has a nicely rolled install  
image that detects most of my hardware. I would use Ubuntu, but it is  
based on the unstable version of Debian. The work done to get OMSA  
running in Debian is all done with Sarge. Might I be able to install  
Ubuntu and get OMSA working? Any success stories on this end of the  
spectrum?

My work so far:
----------------------
So far I have found a few promising install images from Kenshi Muto's  
site http://kmuto.jp/ under Backported d-i images archive. Browsing  
over the forums other links seem to point to this site. After trying  
several images, the 801 build's install came through fairly clean,  
but not without a few hiccups. [An incredibly long pause after  
formatting the 1.1TB /home partition.] However, I am still unable to  
boot into the system. I am getting an error with SCSI (of course).

My error on boot up.
--------------
....
drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.6:USB HID core driver
	Vendor: Generic    Model: Flash HS-COMBO Rev: 4.44
	Type: Driect-Access      ANSI SCSI revision: 00
sd 1:0:0:1: Attached scsi removable disc sdc

"Then a very long pause..."

Done.
ALERT!  /dev/sdc1 does not exist.. Dropping to a shell!
----------------

If anyone has an idea of my specific problem, that would be great. I  
thought Grub might be mapping the drive wrong, so I went in with  
Knoppix and tried to to experiment with some changes. No luck yet.  
Shouldn't I be dealing with a RAID device as opposed to sdc1 anyways?

Thanks for your time!