My Dell PE2650 server won't load any distro except rh psychie
 

Hi all,
Strangly enough, my server reads any distro, goes through the setup and then cant start reading the rpms.

I had a faulty cd-rom when i got it and replaced it with similar.

I canned psychie as it didn't have php by default,and i wanted a head start as a newbie.

Is it practical to upgrade kernels and rpms from a dated distro like psychie... or should i try to mount external usb cd etc

thanks as always

I would guess that it is a SCSI controller driver issue. It appears when this server was first marketed all current Redhat distributions were supported which included version 8. There were several SCSI controllers that were available and without knowing the chipset it will be difficult to provide help. If you could post the output of the lsmod command then we could see what module is being loaded. I assume that RH 8 is still installed.

Whether or not the module is still included in a modern stock 2.6 kernel will be the key to your problem. Another CDROM drive will not help.

Thanks Michaelk,
I'm dying to try that, it's 3am and my wife has a thing about servers in the next room, RH8 is off due to partitioning attemps but i may be able to get the ISMOD results from knoppix?

People always post this server with more currents distros.... Even netinstall versions need to read from the install disk ofter anaconda's preferences are set so it fails, almost like it reads till its mounted and then acnt find it as it doesn't even seek (green light)...

following your advice I have also read that the external scsi driver is being loaded first and that i should use the "expert noprope +"
and force the drivers in that order. per link below.

I may be way off here ??

http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/l...il/020001.html

I would try installing CentOS since it is based on RHEL.

Thanks Michaelk,

You da Man!!!

I'm installing CentOS 5 as wee speak and it gets past setup ..yipee!!!

That's the answer that the intenal scsi driver must preceed the external for the CD to mount during install.

Would not have got there without your suggestions,,, thanks again. :-)

Dell has considerable resources for info on their servers and Linux.. just fyi.

http://linux.dell.com/storage.shtml

http://linux.dell.com/

http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php...itory/hardware

Glad to hear you are making progress. CentOS is a good choice.

Thanks Farslayer,

I've used this forum twice now and have had immediate and pointed reponses.

Thanks for the links as i'm sure i'm not out of trouble yet.

I try to read all posts before posting a request as I appreciate the resources and others time.

I've had my first RH 9 Box for a year now but it's so deregulated in order to get things to work, I have to start again.

My next challenge is SMP kernel for the dell as it has the 2 Xeons.

thanks again
David

I believe all the Centos 5 Kernels are SMP enabled already..

lshw -C processor

yum -ivh lshw since lshw is probably not installed by default

or
cat /proc/cpuinfo
or
dmidecode -t processor


I prefer the lshw method as it plainly distinguished between physical and logical CPU's (logical would be hyperthreading or multiple cores)
dmidecode output is not bad, but lshw format is a lot cleaner imho..

Thanks farslayer :-)

I really appreciate it guys...

It's easy to think you've enabled something (appears to work ok..) but not the best choice. .

This info is invaluable .... thanks again.