Dell 2950 w/ RHEL 5u3, "Missing Operating System" after OS load
 

Greetings All! This is my first post to this forum! :-)
I have Dell Poweredge 2950s w/ the following specs:
- 3.00Ghz Quad Cores
- hda 6x300gb
- 16gb mem
- Perc 6/i FW Pckg 6.1.1-0047
- Bios 2.5.0
Every time I try to load RHEL 5u3 (using graphical or text mode), after the load completes and it tries to boot I get a "Missing Operating System" error. I've checked the dvd by loading it on 2950s w/ different specs and it loads/boots fine. I've also tried loaded different OS versions on the servers in question and that works as well. I've tried an 'out of the box' install and also have rebuilt the internal raid (Raid 5) as well.
Anyone else have an issue like this?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

Getting frustrated... :(

TIA,
-lee

Did you verify hard drive (RAID set) is bootable in BIOS settings?

Did you verify you don't have anything in any of the other boot priority items (e.g. CD/DVD, usb) that have higher priority than the disk/RAID set?

We've installed RHEL5 on several 2950s and 1950s (on the PERC RAID devices) with no issues.

I've seen something like this before, although not on that specific hardware. When I've seen it, it usually has to do with the module(s) for the RAID controller, not being in the initrd file. The MBR knows it's got an OS, but the disk doesn't 'appear', so it sits there.

I've gotten around it by booting from CD/DVD, into 'rescue' mode, then loading the drivers manually with the "modprobe <module name>" command. Of course, you'll have to know which modules to load..:) There are usually a limited number of them, though, for SCSI/RAID controllers, if you've got to try them one at a time...

After you get the system booted, you can use the mkinitrd command to build an initrd file with the right modules in it, and you should be OK from there on. RHEL support can give you a hand, too...

I've loaded 4u6 on them w/o touching the Bios and they boot normally. As soon as I complete loading 5u3, I get the error message.

The only device set w/ higher boot priority is cd/dvd, which I obviously remove prior to post-load reboot.

Like I said, I tried it on other 2950s w/ different spec and it loads/boots fine...

Not sure why that is. We have PERC 6/i based 2950s on as late as RHEL5.1.

The driver for PERC is megaraid. The one for these embedded SAS PERC cards is megaraid_sas. Running "lsmod |grep -i megaraid" shows:
megaraid_sas 67965 4
scsi_mod 186361 5 mptctl,sg,libata,megaraid_sas,sd_mod

Making an initrd with above in it might help though I would have expected it to do it automatically during the install as it did for us on 5.1

FYI: I think RHEL 5.4 is out in general release right now. It might be worthwhile to try that. Maybe there was a bug in 5.3?

I've never attempted any of that. Are the drivers on the dvd, or located somehwere w/in the OS that is loaded (but won't boot from)?

TIA,
-lee

The drivers are both on the DVD and on the hard drive, entertainingly enough. I expected it to auto-magically build the initrd with the correct drivers too, but it doesn't. The mention of the megaraid brought back memories, as that's the same module I had problems with.

I had to boot to rescue mode (or the "load modules" option...I was using openSUSE at the time..), and load the megaraid_old, then the megaraid modules. After that, I continued the load from hard drive, and everything came right up.

The mkinitrd command isn't that tough to go through, and the man page says alot about it, and Google has lots of how-tos. But if you have doubts, get in touch with RedHat support....you're in a supported config, and they can help you with it over the phone.

...

We do most of our installs here without the Dell helper disk since it expects a specific install CD/DVD. I've not seen the problems using RHEL 5 non-Dell install media on our 2950s.

I had to use the older Megaraid module mentioned by Tbone on an old PERC 2 (American Megatrends rather than Adaptec) on Fedora some time back on an old PE 2450 but haven't had to use it on a PERC 6/i on RHEL 5 on a 2950.

Problem solved...somehow the the GRUB boot loader was being deselected during load. I should have paid closer attention to the settings as I was clicking thru the screens. Loaded 4 machines yesterday w/o issue. Sitting in a cold lab for hours on end and not paying attention can be blamed for this one... :-/
Thanks everyone!
-lee

Happens to us all...glad it's working for you, and thanks for posting back the solution.