Betr.: RE: Xenserver 4.0.1 on PE2600 (PERC 4/Di)

[Dell mailing account]

Good day gentlemen,

Thank you both for your help.
It looks like Nick guessed the problem correctly from my perhaps
somewhat unhelpful description. Setting the boot drive in the PERC
configuration actually seems to have fixed my booting problem.

I'll retry installing Xenserver now, perhaps it will work this time.

Thanks again!

Regards,

Bart

>>> <Nick_Parrott at dell.com> 03/14/08 8:04  >>>
Hi Bart,

This is one of two things, either the SysBIOS/PERC settings are
incorrect and are trying to boot from the wrong volume, or the
volume's
boot record is missing or faulted.

As Paul correctly mentioned, the below grub install onto /dev/sda will
write an MBR, and if the PERC setting is correct, boot should be
successful.

Here are the BIOS checks you need to do anyway (be sure you're writing
the Grub to the correct disk.. see below);

F2 System BIOS;
- Go to Boot order and ensure "Hard disk drive" is available, enabled
(see the sq. root sign beside device) and at the top..
- Go to "Hard disk boot priority" - ensure again that the "Hard Disk
C"
is enabled and top of the list.. (this specifies that the first disk
the
PERC presents to the BIOS is the one the BIOS will use to boot from)

PERC 4 BIOS (Ctrl + M)
- Go to CONFIGURE > "Specify Boot Drive" and type the number of the VD
that the OS is installed to.. (check your logical drives with OBJECTS
>
LOGICAL DRIVE, checking the size / RAID type etc..)

To choose which disk (/dev/sda or /dev/sdb etc etc.. use the logical
drive number as a key, 0 is sda, 2 is sdc etc..)

Hope this helps

Regards,

Nick


Nick Parrott
Dell Enterprise Storage Support
Ire +353 (1) 850 543 543
UK +44 (0) 870 908 0500


-----Original Message-----
From: linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com 
[mailto:linux-poweredge-bounces at dell.com] On Behalf Of Paul M. Dyer
Sent: 14 March 2008 15:11
To: Dell mailing account
Cc: linux-poweredge-Lists
Subject: Re: Xenserver 4.0.1 on PE2600 (PERC 4/Di)

Hi,

You could boot into rescue mode, then issue "grub-install /dev/sda".
This assumes /dev/sda is you boot disk.

You might consider RHEL 5.1 and their opensource Xen kernel as another
virtualization option.  The cost is for the yearly subscription, and
comes with phone and online support.

Paul

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dell mailing account" <dellmailing at dewillem.nl>
To: linux-poweredge at dell.com 
Sent: Friday, March 14, 2008 9:15:56 AM (GMT-0600) America/Chicago
Subject: Xenserver 4.0.1 on PE2600 (PERC 4/Di)

Hello,

I'll introduce myself first, as this is my first post to this list.
Skip to the line below if you don't care.

My name is Bart de Munck Mortier, I'm a systems administrator at a
school (1700 students) in the Netherlands. I am quite interested in
Linux, but I'm not at a very advanced level with it yet. Therefore my
apologies if I am ignorant on matters that are simple to you.

Now for some background info on the problem:

We currently have two PE 2900's running Novell GroupWise and our
backup
suite (Symantec Backup Exec), as well as a PE2600 for testing
purposes.
Apart from this we have some lighter machines from other vendors to
run
everything else (eDir/fileservers, school administration, webservers
etc).

We are looking to virtualise many if not all of these machines. Since
we don't like Microsoft very much and have had previous (negative)
experience with their virtualization software, the only real options
for
us are VMware ESX, which seems to work well and is easy to use, and
Citrix' Xenserver. My problem has to do with the latter.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------

I have tried to install Xenserver 4.0.1 on our PE2600 test machine. At
first it simply stalled right after loading the install files. I
circumvented this by starting with the 'p2v-legacy' option and then
canceling the physical-to-virtual process. It then asks if you wish to
install the Xenserver host, which I did.

I went through the entire installation process without any significant
problems. After rebooting, however, the system claimed to be unable to
find any boot devices.

It took some googling, but I think I managed to trace this to a
problem
with the PERC 4/Di and its apparent incompatibility with Linux. I also
came upon the linux.dell.com site which has some resources to do with
this issue. However, I don't really know what to do with those to make
it work, especially in combination with Xenserver, as there doesn't
exactly appear to be much of an option to install custom drivers.

I'd be quite grateful for any help. Thanks in advance!

Regards,
Bart de Munck Mortier

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