Re: Re: Debian Installation with a Redhat kernel/drivers

[Madl Alfred - Together AT]

Hi !

Did you really succeed with bootcd ? We never managed to be able to
boot from the created CD successfully...missing /dev/console...kernel
panic...

How did you start a standard Debian installer from a CD created with
bootcd ? Or do you also have local disks in your blades ?

Does IBM support your vanilly 2.4.31 kernel + patches in the case of
HW/SW problems ? 

Did you use the downloadable (IBM certified) driver sources from qlogic
website (intended for Redhat/SuSe) for building your kernel ?

Did you ever try to use a standard Debian 2.6.8-2 kernel with your
Broadcom Ethernet adapters in the blade center ? Whenever we tried that
we had to reset the ethernet adapter of the blade center afterwards...

Thanks a lot.

Alfred

Debian Installation with a Redhat kernel/drivers

[Madl Alfred - Together AT]

Hi !

Just want to inform that we have successfully installed Debian Sarge 3.1r0a (32 
Bit, 64 Bit AMD64/EM64T will follow next days) on an IBM x345 with QLogic SAN 
adapters (no local disks) and on an IBM x460 with QLogic SAN adapters (no local 
disks) by using a custom kernel which was built directly from redhat 2.6.9-11 
kernel sources (in order to have IBM supported driver versions). 

We also have succesfully produced custom Debian NetInst install CDs which boot 
already (and install) the custom kernel in order to access SAN disks during the 
installation process and boot from SAN (again with the right kernel) during the 
second phase of debian installer.

We will document the build process of the Redhat kernel sources for Debian (we 
call it blueshoe kernel :-) as well as the creation of the custom install 
disks with this kernel.

Hope this is interesting for Debian wannabe users which struggle with branded 
hardware that officially just supports Redhat kernels / drivers. This way they 
can get the best of both worlds...

Many thanks to Russell Stuart for his great tool Kern2Deb...

Greetings.

Alfred Madl
Together Teamlösungen