From: [email protected]

Hello,
after quite a few hours of struggle I've managed to get grub working on a Proliant ML360. I really can't say _why_ it worked (grin), but I write this email anyway, hoping you can get some clues from my effort.

The whole trouble seems to be the caused by the disk subsystem: a Compaq SmartArray 5i, handled by HP's own opensource driver cciss.
This is probably irrelevant as far as grub is concerned: I used a sarge 20040807 snapshot with kernel 2.6; the driver version is 2.6.2.

On first attempt at installing a boot loader [on the MBR, bootable partition was (hd0,1)], both GRUB and LILO installers failed without many explanations (grub error was the one you were referring to at thread beginning).

After some fiddling, I tried repartitioning the disc to make the bootable partition on /dev/cciss/c0d0p1 [i.e., (hd0,0)]: this was enough to let me install LILO: no clue as to why, but it did work properly from within debian-installer.

Since I got LILO working, I rebooted and installed grub with dpkg, then launched update-grub to createxd a menu.lst. I then rebooted with a grub floppy, and done a setup from there with "root (hd0,0)\n setup (hd0)".
Setup ends with this error:

Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+16 p (hd0,0)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... failed

Error 22: No such partition

but the final result is a(n almost) bootable system. Again, no clue as to what the above mentioned error points to.

I said almost bootable: the kernel loads correctly, so that grub's part is ok, but it fails to mount the root partition.

Fiddling with the initrd image I found out that for some reason the cciss driver initially loads /dev/cciss with a different device structure: so in order to boot properly, menu.lst should contain devices of the form /dev/cciss/host0/target0/part1 instead of the short form /dev/cciss/c0d0p1 used in the fully booted system. Modifying this by hand gave me the correct boot sequence - but this should really be handled inside initrd scripts, or at the very least by the update-grub utility.

I will keep the server in-house for a few more days: it really worries me to install this machine in its final location until I'm sure it will reboot properly next time I upgrade it :-}

BTW, this was my first Debian install: well, I'm really impressed by the GREAT work you have done! Just drop me a note if there's anything I can do to help: I'm more than willing to make more tests under the guidance of someone more knoledgeable than me.

Cheers,

Ant9000


-- _____________________________________________________________________________ Dr. Antonio Galea N e t W i s e http://www.netwise.it Sviluppo tecnico Tecnologie per il Web Tel 0461.421016 Fax 0461.426021 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Allen's Axiom: when all else fails, read the instructions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- --



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