OpenServer 5.0.4 on PowerEdge 2900

[Leonard, Scott]

This is something I worked on for a long time.  There was no official
HBA driver for OSR504 when I worked on it maybe 6 months ago.  They put
out a driver for 6.0, but not any of the 5.0.x releases.  There are a
few unofficial drivers, but I never got one to work.  

FYI the error you are getting indicates the hard disk controller is not
detected.  This to me would say you are not booting from an actual
floppy disk, but trying to install from a CD-Rom.  Is this correct?  If
you are booting from a floppy disk like a rescue disk, you should not
get those errors unless the disk was made to boot from a kernel that was
installed somewhere on the hard disk the error message is referring to
rather than from the floppy itself.

If you are trying to install 5.0.4, I would agree with Jason that the
correct solution is to find the HBA drivers for your hard disk
controller and link them as he said.

Another issue I ran into installing 5.0.x on a 2900 is the lack of dual
core processor support in the OS.  This caused a lot of problems, some
of which didn't manifest until I had been running the server for quite
some time.  It was not uncommon to get kernel panic errors and hard
crashes at random times while using the server.  Just thought I would
put this out there so you were aware of some problems with this setup
before working to hard to get it running.

Even SCO OSR 6.0 didn't have dual core support until maybe the second
maintenance pack I think, so I don't think there is any chance of seeing
a MP release with that support for 5.0.x.


Scott Leonard
System Operations
Client Technical Consultant III
 
-----Original Message-----
From: jason at ess-tech.co.za [mailto:jason at ess-tech.co.za] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2007 1:40 AM
To: Minoru Stephen
Cc: sco-poweredge at dell.com
Subject: Re: OpenServer 5.0.4 on PowerEdge 2900

Stupid question but have you got the right hba's. you would need to boot
off the install cd, at the boot: link the new btlds into the kernel, it
will ask you to insert the disk for the perc 5/i, then should install.
Don't know if there is a openserver driver for perc5/i for 504.

Don't know if there are drivers for openserver 504.
> I am trying to install SCO OpenServer 5.0.4 on a PE 2900 with PERC
5/i.
> When booting off of floppy, system reads, "WARNING: hd: no root disk
> controller was found".  I would very very much appreciate any
assistance.
>
> Thank you in advanced.
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