Dell M600 Blade: 6.4 works, 7.x and 8.x fail to boot

[Thierry Herbelot]

Le Saturday 14 November 2009, Peter Beckman a écrit :
> On Sat, 14 Nov 2009, Thierry Herbelot wrote:
> > Le Friday 13 November 2009, Peter Beckman a écrit :
> >> I've been scratching my head all day on an issue that's been
> >> frustrating.
> >>
> >> I've got two FreeBSD 6.2 instances installed on two M600 blades, and am
> >> moving to a new datacenter with M600 blades and trying to install
> >> FreeBSD 7.2 or 8.  But as others on this list and elsewhere have
> >> mentioned, seemingly without resolution, is that it doesn't work.
> >>
> >>
> >> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2009-July/029147.html
> >> http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=486
> >>
> >> I was able to install 6.4 on it today, but I'm still at a loss as to why
> >> 7.x and even 8.x will not.  Did the architecture change in such a way
> >> that it could no longer support M600 blades?  Did someone leave
> >> something out of the standard ISO kernel?  Am I not doing it right?
> >>
> >> Happy to pass along my dmesg.boot;
> >
> > from the two URLs you provide, it seems that i386 is working (for all
> > FreeBSD versions) and only amd64 is failing : can you confirm this ?
> >
> > then, one of the first steps would be a the dmesg of both a succeeding
> > and a failing kernels (verbose !)
>
>   I tried the bootonly ISOs for 7.x and 8.x, both amd64 and i386, all of
>   which fail to boot on the Dell M600.

aha !

anyway, even with a CDROM, you can boot *verbose* and note where the boot 
stops (even if there won't be a serial console, write down the blocking 
device probe)

	TfH

>
>   I was able to boot the bootonly 6.4 ISO, install via the net, and a
> friend suggested I try binary updating.  I have been able to binary update
> to 7.0-RELEASE thus far.  I'm trying to get to 8.0-RC3 via binary update
> now, and will report back.

(a more robust, and slower, way to upgrade is via make buildworld / make 
buildkernel)
>
>   I believe the issue is not with FreeBSD but the bootonly ISO.  It could
>   also be a problem with the other ISOs, I'm not yet sure.

we may get a hint if/when someone sends some verbose dmesg ;-)
>
> > PS : is there any more recent version of the Dell BIOS ?
>
>   According to the iDRAC, the firmware 2.2.3 reported as installed is what
>   Dell reports as the latest version (August 2009).

fine
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
> beckman at angryox.com                                 http://www.angryox.com/
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------