HP Proliant Server will not boot to O.S. Upon power-up system performs POST and finally starts looking for bootable device...3 are listed CD-ROM, ?, SCSI.
And then falls into a loop here.
No errors that I recognize (I'm newbie to LINUX).
Server has 6 SCSI drives and using the SMART START CD, are testing ok.
I've broken down box to minimum hardware requirements and was even trying to boot in Safe Mode, if there is even such a thing for Linux.
Thanks for any help!!

H,

Seems there is no OS loaded, or did you starting the linux kernel? Could you please post some more information, like last screen messages.

I will post more later when back onsite, but a little background......server had been working fine for years with little or no maintenance required. System was inadvertently powered down and this is when problem started. Power down had been performed before with ability to reboot.
Sorry, I am not familiar with the terminology.....Linux kernel?

Ok, I don't see anything unique (error messages) upon reboot. It ends at:

Attempting boot from CD-ROM
Attempting boot from Floppy Drive (A
Attempting boot from Hard Drive (C

and then finally Attempting boot from NIC

Copyright information under this:
HP UNDI PXE-2.1 v7.7.8

I have replaced one of the SCSI drives one time a couple years ago and I believe it was just a matter of pulling bad one out and installing new drive.

if it attempts to boot from the drive, but doesnt', that is a good indication it did not find an MBR.
First thing I would check is the RAID config, assuming there is one. If your array is not being spun up and made available before the BIOS wants to hand off to the MBR, then it would appear that you have no OS. A bad drive in your RAID config could cause that as well.
If that seems in order, I would try booting from a live cd to make sure all your partitions still exist. If they do, then perhaps reinstalling grub will be your fix. If the partitions are not there, then that would explain why your server thinks there is no OS.

Thanks Bob, can you explain process for checking configuration seeing as I can't do much of anything after it hangs up.
I have booted using the Smart Start CD with no problem.
What is live cd?

A live cd such as ubuntu would probably be your easiest option. The idea is that it runs the operating system off the CD instead of the hard drives, that allows you to examine the system without running it. you can then look at the drives (a RAID array will be presented to a live linux CD like a regular hard drive, so your RAID array might be sda, and you might have sda1 and sda2 on it for partitions, or the individual discs will be presented to you as sda, sdb, and so on). You can then mount these partitions into the live environment, and see if your data is intact. This is what you hope to see, your data intact

Look here for live cd help:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

It seems odd that your machine would not try to boot from the RAID controller. you say it looks for the scsi drives, which isn't wrong if your server is configured to not use RAID, but such a configuration isn't common in my corner of the world. Did the server used to have a RAID array and now it doesn't? Did the smart start CD "repair" anything?

You might also want to check in BIOS and in the array controller firmware to make sure the correct device is set as the boot controller. You should be prompted during the power up sequence to hit (I believe it is F8) to enter the array controller setup. From there you can check a few things, such as how the current array is setup and which controller is used as a boot controller.

When you say powered down do you mean a graceful powerdown, or that the plug got pulled?

Thanks Bob, when I say it searches for the scsi drives, I was referring to C:, is that not the same thing?.....I was assuming this is where the o.s. is stored.
I'm pretty certain this is set up in raid config. In troubleshooting with SmartStart, I believe drives were listed as physical/logical......doesn't this represent the raid config?
The SmartStart didn't appear to fix anything, but diagnostics test ran fine.
Its been awhile since I tried, but I thought I attempted to select raid controller as first boot device in BIOS, but change wouldn't take.

Erik, it was a hard shut down, which I have done before with the ability to just reboot with no problem.

Linux doesn't use drive letters like Windows, it uses mount points. Typically a system will look for a /boot and / (on Red Hat by default it will create a small /boot partition and a large / partition). Either way the reference to C: is just something in HP BIOS indicating it is trying to boot to the first hard drive in the system. Now depending on the setup of the server this can be either single drive or a RAID logical volume containing multiple physical drives.

Have you checked the drive setup on the SmartArray controller directly by hitting F8 when prompted during the boot process? This will tell you for sure how the drives are configured, and which if any drives have failed etc. Assuming that it was a RAID setup will not help any, and a hard shutdown can have done some unknown damage to drives or controller.

You should also try booting to a live CD as suggested previously (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. doesn't really matter) to make sure that the original partition layout is in tact and data is on the drives. The fact that it is not even attempting to boot into the OS indicates that the MBR is bad, or BIOS is pointing to the wrong drive to boot with.

Erik, I did check the Smart Array controller and shows as follows:

Logical Drive #1, Raid 1 + 0 ok
Logical Drive #2, Raid 1 + 0 ok
Logical Drive #3, Raid 1 + 0 ok

I burned the live cd and will attempt to boot from it.

Does this server have more than one array controller? These servers will default to booting from the onboard controller. If this server had an upgraded controller added and then BIOS modified to boot from that controller it is possible this setting got lost with the hard reset.

Erik, I think there is only one....at least only one is listed during POST.

Are you saying that the Smart Array Controller should be listed as an option in the boot order? If I recall I tried changing boot order, but system wouldn't accept it........sorry, its been quite awhile since I worked on it.

Bob, previously you had mentioned reinstalling grub.....is this similar/same as LILO, because I see this acronym during POST.

grub - grand unified boot loader - it is pretty much the successor to lilo.
Grub will not happen during the POST, it will be the beginning of the stage after the POST. somewhere at the end of POST, the bios checks block devices for an MBR record, if it finds one, it will hand off to that device. Grub/lilo is the software that gets installed to the mbr of that device. If there is no bootloader software installed on the MBR, there is no instruction on how to find the operating system that resides on that device. That will generally produce the symptoms you describe, no operating system found.
Then of course there is Grub and Grub2, and which one of those you use matters too. There are plenty of places on the net to find tutorials on fixing it. The fix is almost always done with a live cd, so first thing to do is check to see if your data is intact. Take appropriate action from there.