[rhelv6-list] Dell servers stopping at GRUB if no manual input

[Matthias Saou]

On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:00:52 +0100 (BST)
Ben <bda20 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> I have a few Dell servers of varying marques: R710, R420, etc.  I've 
> installed RHEL6 (64bit) on them via DRAC/serial console.  The
> grub.conf looks like this:
> 
> default=0
> timeout=5
> serial --unit=1 --speed=115200
> terminal --timeout=5 serial console
> title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (2.6.32-358.11.1.el6.x86_64)
>          root (hd0,0)
>          kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-358.11.1.el6.x86_64 ro
> root=/dev/mapper/vg_pinky-lv_root rd_NO_LUKS  KEYBOARDTYPE=pc
> KEYTABLE=uk LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_LVM_LV=vg_pinky/lv_swap rd_NO_MD
> SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto console=ttyS1,115200
> rd_LVM_LV=vg_pinky/lv_root rd_NO_DM
> initrd /initramfs-2.6.32-358.11.1.el6.x86_64.img title Red Hat
> Enterprise Linux (2.6.32-358.el6.x86_64) root (hd0,0)
> kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-358.el6.x86_64 ro
> root=/dev/mapper/vg_pinky-lv_root rd_NO_LUKS  KEYBOARDTYPE=pc
> KEYTABLE=uk LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_LVM_LV=vg_pinky/lv_swap rd_NO_MD
> SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto console=ttyS1,115200
> rd_LVM_LV=vg_pinky/lv_root rd_NO_DM
> initrd /initramfs-2.6.32-358.el6.x86_64.img
> 
> Whenever I reboot them and I'm not connected to the serial console
> (or have a keyboard and monitor plugged in) and don't press <space>
> and/or <return> at the point at which it says "Press any key to
> continue." to get the GRUB boot menu up, the servers don't boot.
> They just appear to stop at some point and are non-responsive via any
> method (connecting to the DRAC/serial console, or plugging in a
> keyboard and mouse) until rebooted.
> 
> Any ideas why, please?  This didn't used to happen with RHEL5, I
> don't think.

You might want to check the "Redirection after boot" setting for the
serial configuration in the BIOS. Typically, since you've set up a
proper serial console at the GRUB level (and hopefully after too), then
it should be "Disabled".

If that's not the issue, then I don't know what could be, and haven't
seen that issue with RHEL6 on similar hardware.

Matthias

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