RE: jessie won't install/boot on a Dell Poweredge R815

[Jared_Dominguez]

Dell Customer Communication
>>Are you certain that there isn't a PERC H700 in this machine? [Sort of
>>odd that mpt2sas is triggering a state error in your screenshot if 
> there
>>actually isn't one.]
>>
>> There could be one. But I probably don't use it. I use software RAID. 
> Dell
>> wouldn't sell an R815 without an OS. I think I purchased it with RHEL
> which
>> may have needed the PERC H700. But I never even booted RHEL. The first
>> thing I did was a fresh install of squeeze, or maybe wheezy.
> 
>We definitely sell PowerEdge systems without an OS and have for quite a
>while. However, we do limit configuration for higher end systems to
> include
>hardware RAID.
> 
> My appologies. I may misremember. I purchased the machines (twelve
> T5500s, four R815s, and four C6145s) about 5 years ago and don't remember
> precisely the arrangements. I'd have to check archived email to know for
> sure.
> 
> The machines were purchased through ECN (Purdue's Engineering IT
> services). I'm a lowly professor. But I software-maintain my own machines. I
> definitely didn't spec out a hardware RAID controller. The mechanisms by
> which one was included are unclear at this point.

It looks like Stuart is out of office, but I'll try to remember to ping him 
when he's back.

>There's definitely a PERC controller in there based on
> 
>"05:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS2008
> PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Falcon] (rev 03)"
> 
>I'm not seeing the subvendor/subsystem ID's there but it's presumably the
>PERC 6/i. If you're really not using it at all, you might be able to pull
>it out if the driver for it is causing problems. However, I suspect you
>need it to connect to the drive backplane. Stuart (CCed) may be able to
>offer some more insight into driver issues you might see.
> 
>The SATA controller should only really be in use by the optical drive if
>present. Some of the mid-tier systems of that generation support SATA
>drives connected directly to a controller on the motherboard, but support
>for that under Linux was spotty from my recollection.
> 
> My T5500s have optical drives. But neither my R815s nor my C6145s have
> optical drives. All my machines have SATA drives. The R815s in question each
> have six ST9500530NS drives. They have been running squeeze and then
> wheezy with software RAID for 5 years since purchase.
> 
> Now that I have someone from Dell on the line who appears to be Debian-
> friendly, it would be nice if you made firmware upgrades Debian-friendly. I
> have been able to apply

If you have an iDRAC, it's possible to those updates out-of-band using the 
Lifecycle Controller using either WS-MAN or racadm.

I'm told (I work on client platforms (laptops/desktops/etc) now so haven't 
checked) that DUPs (the .BIN files) built after December 2014 should work on 
Debian and Ubuntu now, though only PowerEdge 12G/13G were tested. Also, not all 
types of DUPs have been tested, but the BIOS and iDRAC DUPs should work pretty 
well. More obscure stuff like Qlogic DUPs may not work. I'm not working in that 
area so am just relaying information and don't know much more than that.

>   R815_BIOS_JF8YH_LN_3.2.2.BIN
> 
> but have not been able to apply
> 
>   ESM_Firmware_7N76T_LN32_1.07_A00.BIN
>   ESM_Firmware_J7YYK_LN32_2.85_A00.BIN
>   SATA_FRMW_LX_R300994.BIN
> 
> (I don't even know if either of the ESM upgrades are for my hardware. But
> the shell scripts don't run.)

ESM = Embedded Server Management. "ESM" updates are for updating the iDRAC.

> Jeff (http://engineering.purdue.edu/~qobi)

RE: jessie won't install/boot on a Dell Poweredge R815

[Jared_Dominguez]

>Are you certain that there isn't a PERC H700 in this machine? [Sort of
>odd that mpt2sas is triggering a state error in your screenshot if there
>actually isn't one.]
> 
> There could be one. But I probably don't use it. I use software RAID. Dell
> wouldn't sell an R815 without an OS. I think I purchased it with RHEL which
> may have needed the PERC H700. But I never even booted RHEL. The first
> thing I did was a fresh install of squeeze, or maybe wheezy.

We definitely sell PowerEdge systems without an OS and have for quite a while. 
However, we do limit configuration for higher end systems to include hardware 
RAID.

There's definitely a PERC controller in there based on 

"05:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS2008 
PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Falcon] (rev 03)"

I'm not seeing the subvendor/subsystem ID's there but it's presumably the PERC 
6/i. If you're really not using it at all, you might be able to pull it out if 
the driver for it is causing problems. However, I suspect you need it to 
connect to the drive backplane. Stuart (CCed) may be able to offer some more 
insight into driver issues you might see.

The SATA controller should only really be in use by the optical drive if 
present. Some of the mid-tier systems of that generation support SATA drives 
connected directly to a controller on the motherboard, but support for that 
under Linux was spotty from my recollection.

>OK. This:
> 
>> 00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI
> SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [IDE mode]
> 
>makes me think that the SATA controller is in IDE/Legacy mode instead of
>AHCI. In theory, this shouldn't matter, but it's possible that this is
>also a problem. I'd try switching it in the bios and see what happens.
> 
> I'll do that in a bit. Before I got your current post, I tried some things in
> response to your previous post. I'll report on that here and then go back and
> try the new things.
> 
> Here is what I did.
> 
> I had a fresh minimal USB install of wheezy running. That install was done
> with debian-wheezy-DI-b1-amd64-netinst.iso from Jul 15  2012. I also put
> the non-free firmware on the USB. When I did that, I unchecked all of the
> boxes during the install for any extra packages. The only thing that I 
> installed
> after that was
> 
>apt-get install less
> 
> I then did
> 
>nano /etc/apt/source.list
>(change all wheezy to jessie)
>apt-get update
>apt-get dist-upgrade
> 
> I answered all of the defaults.
> 
> (default) all
> (default) no
> (default) cron
> 
> I captured this with
> 
>script -t 2>upgrade-jessie1 time -a ~/upgrade-jessie1.script
> 
> (My mistake. I forgot a period between upgrade-jessie1 and time.)
> 
>http://upplysingaoflun.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/time
>http://upplysingaoflun.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/upgrade-jessie1
> 
> You can see that it all worked.
> 
> You can see that at the end I did
> 
>apt-get install firmware-linux
> 
>dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
># default
># default
># check all /dev/sd?
> 
> and it all worked.
> 
> You can also see that at the end I did
> 
>cat /proc/mdstat
> 
> and all 6 components of both md0 and md1 were there.
> 
> Then I did and
> 
>/sbin/reboot
> 
> The first reboot failed. It gave a similar screen as to the one that you 
> already
> saw.
> 
> Then I did a second reboot, with delay=20. That did the same.
> 
> Then I did a third reboot, with rootdelay=20. That worked. I got a login
> prompt, logged in, and got a root shell.
> 
> At that point, I did a
> 
>cat /proc/mdstat
> 
> and all 6 components of both md0 and md1 were there.
> 
> Then I did a
> 
>dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
> 
> My intent was to add rootdelay=20 to the command line. But I got lots of
> errors while doing so. I realized that I should have done this under script.
> So I did
> 
>script -t 2>upgrade-jessie2.time -a ~/upgrade-jessie2.script
> 
> (this time with the period) and redid
> 
>dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
> 
> and also did
> 
>cat /proc/mdstat
> 
> and attempted
> 
>mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sda1
>mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdb1
>mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdc1
>mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdd1
>mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sde1
>mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdf1
> 
> but these all failed.
> 
>http://upplysingaoflun.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/upgrade-jessie2.script
>http://upplysingaoflun.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/upgrade-jessie2.time
> 
> The machine is now in the state left at the end of the above script. If you
> want me to do some more things in this state, let me know. Or I can do a
> fresh USB install of wheezy and rebuild md0.
> 
>>What does the kernel output while it is detecting the disks and
>>partitions?
> 
>Remove the quiet option from the kernel command line by editing it in
> grub.
> 
> I will do this next time.
> 
>>