RedHat 8.0 onto a Dell PowerEdge SC1425

[Richard Hobbs]

Hello,

Thank you for your response. It's good to know that someone out there
still installed RedHat 8 onto Dell machines with SATA drives and never
has any problems :-)

Do you have a standard routine to install RH8 onto these machines? Do
you use certain kernel parameters when you boot into the installation?

Basically, i guess i'm asking for a copy of your standard install steps
for RH8 on Dell machines, so we can try and copy it.

No matter what we do, we just cannot get the drives to appear as sda and
sdb - they keep appearing as hdc and hde.

Also, depending on our kernel parameters, Redhat sometimes detects no
hard drives, and a CD-ROM, or no CD-ROM and the hard drives, or neither.

It's very strange, and most frustrating, lol

Thank you in advance, i look forward to your response.

Richard.


R. de Kuijer wrote:
> Hello Richard,
> 
> It is strange but SATA uses sd* instead of hd*.
> SATA always make sure it begins with sda , not depending which
> controllerport it uses.
> The dvd-drive should always get the hda.
> 
> Your can check or in the BIOS the SATA uses the normal mode and not the
> legacy mode,
> and check what kind it uses, e.g. SATA or PATA.
> 
> If that's no issue, check with 'fdisk -l'(rescue mode or boot with
> knoppix) what the system uses.
> Check the fstab, how it is defined, check or grub matches fstab.
> 
> You uses strange grub option, I cannot actually place the "ide"part.
> 
> Maybe give a screendump of the last messages before stopping with booting.
> 
> It should be working, because I allmost daily install SATA-drives with
> RedHat8 on Dell machines, and never have problems.
> But I must aknowledge that RedHat 8 is an old Distro and is not always
> working well with SATA.
> 
> That's why I think it's strange you uses RedHat8 and not Fedora 5 or a
> newer Distro.
> Newer Distro's are much better developped.
> 
> Regards
> Ron
> 
> 
> Richard Hobbs wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have successfully installed RedHat 8.0 onto a Dell PowerEdge SC1425
>> today. This server has two SATA hard drives, and an IDE DVD-ROM drive.
>>
>> Using the following kernel parameters, i successfully installed across
>> both hard drives from CD:
>>
>>   ide0=0x1f0,0x3f6,14 vga=791 resolution=1024x768 expert
>>
>> However, since installation, the system no longer boots. I've tried
>> appending the above parameters to the kernel line in grub, but is still
>> doesn't boot.
>>
>> It starts to boot, and everything looks fine, until it tries to remount
>> the root fs in read/write mode, at which point it appears to hang.
>>
>> There are several messages on screen, all of which are normal, except
>> two instances of the following:
>>
>>   hdc: status error: status = 0x58
>>
>> NOTE: For some reason, the two hard drives were picked up as hdc and
>> hde, but it seemed to install OK.
>>
>> If i boot up into rescue mode on the installation CD, i can mount the
>> drives fine, and chroot into my newly built system, but it just won't
>> boot up by itself.
>>
>> Does anyone have any suggestions??
>>
>> Thank you in advance!
>>
>> Richard.
>>
>>   
> 

-- 
Richard Hobbs (Systems Administrator)
Toshiba Research Europe Ltd. - Speech Technology Group
Web: http://www.toshiba-europe.com/research/
Normal Email: richard.hobbs at crl.toshiba.co.uk
Mobile Email: mobile at mongeese.co.uk
Tel: +44 1223 376964        Mobile: +44 7811 803377

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