cant install FreeBSD 7 on HP Proliant G3

Christoph Weber-Fahr

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Nov 11, 2009, 6:11:29 PM11/11/09

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Hello,

we can't get FreeBSD 7.x installations running on older
Proliant Servers (DL380 G3).

We install via iLo.

The same scenario works perfectly with FreeBSD 6.4.

Apparently, iLo creates the ISO image as USB cdrom,
which for some reason doesn't work with the 7.2 install
kernel. The kernel comes up, you can make all the
necessary settings, but once it tries to access the
boot cd it complains not being able to access
sector -1 on cd.

Affected are HP Proliant DL380 Servers of Generation 3
(and maybe earlier.). We *did* flash the iLo firmware
up to HP's most recent iLo 1 version, so that shouldn't
be the issue.

Anybody seen that problem before?

What changed with USB cdrom between 6.4 and 7.x ?

Any hint is gratefully appreciated.

Regards

Christoph Weber-Fahr

Dominic Fandrey

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Nov 12, 2009, 12:09:19 PM11/12/09

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Christoph Weber-Fahr wrote:
> Hello,
>
> we can't get FreeBSD 7.x installations running on older
> Proliant Servers (DL380 G3).
>
> We install via iLo.
>
> The same scenario works perfectly with FreeBSD 6.4.

> ...

>
> What changed with USB cdrom between 6.4 and 7.x ?

I've got no idea, but you might want to try an 8.0 release
candidate. 8.0 comes with a completely new USB stack.

Also the file system locking nightmare that was caused by one of
the last remaining GIANT locks is gone.

Regards

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Norman

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Nov 12, 2009, 3:13:51 PM11/12/09

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Maybe it's poor sampling, but I recall a lot of threads
both on the mailing lists and the FreeBSD forums
about this model of Proliant. I don't know what, if any
fixes have been done, but you might search those
two resources.

Indi

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Nov 12, 2009, 6:48:29 PM11/12/09

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On 2009-11-12, Dominic Fandrey <kami...@bsdforen.de> wrote:
>
> I've got no idea, but you might want to try an 8.0 release
> candidate. 8.0 comes with a completely new USB stack.
>
> Also the file system locking nightmare that was caused by one of
> the last remaining GIANT locks is gone.
>

I'll second that. Been running 8.0-RC2 on one server and one desktop,
and it really rocks.
:)

--
indi

Christoph Weber-Fahr

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Nov 16, 2009, 6:35:46 PM11/16/09

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Norman wrote:
> On Nov 11, 6:11 pm, Christoph Weber-Fahr <we...@gmx.de> wrote:
>> we can't get FreeBSD 7.x installations running on older
>> Proliant Servers (DL380 G3).
>>
>> We install via iLo.

[...]

> Maybe it's poor sampling, but I recall a lot of threads
> both on the mailing lists and the FreeBSD forums
> about this model of Proliant.

The 380 or the 380 G3.

The 380 in general is bound to produce many threads,
since it is HP best sold server (and at some point was
world's most sold server model).

Regards

Christoph Weber-Fahr

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Nov 16, 2009, 6:39:48 PM11/16/09

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Dominic Fandrey wrote:
> I've got no idea, but you might want to try an 8.0 release
> candidate. 8.0 comes with a completely new USB stack.

While that may be interesting for the try, it is not
a solution for me. Our current bas OS for ceratin
applications is 7.2 and I'm certainly not going to a
highly experimental release candidate image of a
dot zero release for heavy duty production systems.

To put this in perspective, until very recently we
were still deploying 6.4.

Regards

Christoph Weber-Fahr