How install easily a Redhat 6.2 on a Compaq Proliant

I will tell you a story about an old Compaq Proliant. Once upon a time an old Compaq Proliant (1996 ) which was abandoned in a corner of the office. It had a Pentium 66 Mhz ( yes with the bug ! ), a Smart RAID 5 controller on the EISA bus, and an Adaptec SCSI controller with a NCR53C710 chip.

My story started with the RedHat 6.0, I decided to install it on this Proliant Compaq. My first difficulty was to recognized the controller Smart2 (thank to Richard Black and Diederick van Dijk and Frantz).
My second difficulty was that install with the Redhat Disks (thank to Michael ). My third difficulty was to recognized the card controller SCSI NCR53C710 (thank to Richard Hirst ).
Since the installation of Redhat 6.1, I noticed an option in the installation: " I don' T cuts any special device drivers loaded for your system. Would you like to load some how? "

The mystery of the " Disk Driver " was born for me!

I found on Redhat Site the home page of Doug Ledford :
       http://people.redhat.com/dledford/
I found the documentation and the Driver Disk Update Development Kit .
The Device Driver Disk Update Development Kit is here : http://people.redhat.com/dledford/

The Documentation of Device Driver Disk Update Development Kit : http://people.redhat.com/dledford/README.mod_devel_kit.html

You can download the Device Driver Update Disk Devel Kit here : http://people.redhat.com/dledford/mod_devel_kit.tgz   ( be careful 3.9M ! )
In this Kit, I found the "Config file" using by Redhat for his Kernel.

My search of the penguin is now finished for Proliant Compaq because this method can adapt easily on other machines.
 
 

Here is the procedure in detail to prepare the install on a Compaq Proliant 2000

• Make the Redhat bootdisk with boot.img from the Redhat CD.

• Make the diskette " Disk Driver " for the card controller SCSI NCR53C710. There is a file sim710.img.zip to be downloaded here .

• Start on with the SmartStart CD or the floppy disk "Compaq System Configuration" and verify what irq your NCR controller is set to.

Also remember that whenever you update a ROM or add new hardware, you need to get and run the latest SCU (System Configuration Utility).
The System ROM and SCU are available at:
http://www.compaq.com/support/files/server/us/index.html

Bios / System ROM:
http://www.compaq.com/support/files/server/us/download/7548.html

SCU ( may get old ):
http://www.compaq.com/support/files/server/us/download/8657.html

Go under the system config. Select view or edit details. Find your Embedded SCSI controller. You may have to hit F6 to dig up the IRQ it's using. When you find the IRQ, replace 11 in the line below with your actual IRQ.
e.g. : smart2 : slot 6
        controler SCSI : slot 9, irq 11

• Boot with your "Boot redhat" and choose linux or linux dd

( if you have problem with your Boot disk try replace vmlinuz by this one )
• first screen, insert your " Disk Driver " in the floppy disk and click OK for ' Insert your driver disk and press OK to continue'
• next screen, choose SCSI
• next screen , choose 53c710 driver for Compaq and NCR machine and hit the box " Add some parameters for modules " and click OK
• next screen , type in option: sim710=addr:0xnumberslot000 (eg: sim710=addr:0x9000)
• next screen , click OK for ' Would you add another driver?
• next screen , choose Smart Controler Compaq and hit the box " Add some parameters for modules " and click OK
• next screen , type in option: eisa=0xnumberslot000 (eg: eisa=0x6000)
• next screen , click NO for ' Would you add another driver? ' (except if you have other choices to make like a card network)
• next screen , select language
• next, select keyboard
• next, choose "Custom System"
• For the partition choices, it's recommended to have the first partition ( that contain /boot ) at or less than 1023 blocks (~ 300 Mb ).You can create a root partition and other partitions for /usr, /var, /home, etc...
• Continue installation like you want

• On the screen of the creation of a diskette " rescue ", type Alt+F2 and leave the "Disk Driver " in the floppy.
• Type the modifications for the diskette " Rescue "

• Type Alt+F1 and click Yes for the diskette " Rescue "
• Continue installation like you want
• If you have jump the step, copy the Kernel 2.2.14-5.0  and create a new LILO.

That's all folks, Your old Proliant is now "Powered by Linux".

You could compile a new Kernel to integrate your network card.
 
 

How create a "rescue" disk on a Redhat !

It's a script "/sbin/mkbootdisk" which permits the creation of a "rescue" disk after the installation of Redhat.

e.g. : /sbin/mkbootdisk --verbose 2.2.14-5.0

But the script doesn't make it properly because there is a bad path to /dev/ida

To create the special "rescue" for the Proliant :

1. /sbin/mkbootdisk --verbose 2.2.14-5.0
2. mount /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy
3. download the script MKDEV.ida here .
4. copy the script in /mnt/floppy/dev
5. cd /mnt/floppy/dev
6. ./MKDEV.ida
7.  Modify the file /mnt/floppy/etc/lilo.conf
         boot=/dev/fd0
         timeout=100
         message=/boot/message
         prompt
         image=/vmlinuz-2.2.14-5.0
                 label=linux
                 root=/dev/ida/c0d0p1
                 append="smart2=0x6000 sim710=addr:0x9000"
         image=/vmlinuz-2.2.14-5.0
                 label=rescue
                 append="load_ramdisk=2 prompt_ramdisk=1"
                 root=/dev/fd0
         image=/vmlinuz-2.2.14-5.0
                 label   =c0d0p1
                 root    =/dev/ida/c0d0p1
         image=/vmlinuz-2.2.14-5.0
                 label   =c0d0p2
                 root    =/dev/ida/c0d0p2
         etc..
8. execute LILO : lilo -r /mnt/floppy

Congratulations : to participants at the correction of the new Kernel ( Smart 2 et NCR53C710 )
( Michael, Richard, Antony, Ragen, Diederick, ... )
 

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