Dell blade Re: a fun project

[Don Wilde]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 4:01 AM, Dieter <freebsd at sopwith.solgatos.com>
wrote:

> > I was able to boot the distro kernel of  amd64-7.0-R from a USB CDROM,
> but
> > it hung up three quarters of the way through the probe process. It hung
> > after the last PCI probe, and before the first SIO probe. The 'verbose
> > logging' bootup didn't give me any more clues; it identified the 34th
> (!)
> > PCI bus port more completely, but it didn't give any more clues to what
> hun=
> > g
> > it up.
>
> If you solve this, be sure to let us know.


You make funnee, he he. ME? Let's just say that this'll be my first foray
into the boot process. Capital learning experience. :)))

>
>
> > I was able to get the i386 ISO to complete the probe and move on to the
> > FreeBSD sysinstall menu, but wasn't able to complete the install due to
> the
> > fact that there are no ATAPI CDROM ports on the blade and it couldn't
> use
> > the USB CD as a source.
>
> IIRC you can get a sh prompt from the sysinstall menu.
> Then you can fdisk, newfs, and mount a hard drive, and if it will let you
> mount the CD, you can do something like
>
>        export DESTDIR=/mnt
>        cd /cdrom/7.0-RELEASE
>        for foo in base doc catpages dict games info manpages proflibs
> ports lib32
>        do
>                cd ${foo}
>                ./install.sh
>                cd ..
>        done
>        cd kernels
>        ./install.sh generic  # or whichever kernel you think will run best
> on your box
>        sync


This is good data. Thanks for the details, Dieter. If I can get to the
prompt, I can now avoid the USB CD issue, though I may have to make a CD
with a kernel that has cam enabled, which I believe is not  in the GENERIC.
(?) The BTX loader did identify the USB CD as cd0, so maybe I'm okay without
atapicam.

>
> There is also the build a hard disk on another machine, then move it
> to the target machine method.
>


I don't think I have access to a more normal system that utilizes these
drives. They're removable 2.5" SAS6 drives. However, it may indeed be that
one of our earlier Magnum (2S Opteron) blades will work and I can build a
drive on one of them, as you suggest. Worth a try.

Thanks for all your help!

-- :D