A while back, I had problems installing OpenBSD on Proliants. I'd get all the way through the installation process and reboot the computer, and the BIOS wouldn't boot OpenBSD from the first the RAID1 hard disk. Playing with disklabel and using other commands to copy the MBR didn't work. If I boot from floppy or CD, I can chroot into my installed operating system just fine. It just wouldn't boot. Looking through the OpenBSD lists, I didn't find "the" answer, so I posted asking for help.
I found that the problem wasn't with my BSD install, but I needed to perfom an additional installation step with my Proliant. When installing operating systems, best practices include using the Compaq SmartStart CD that comes with the system. If I boot with that CD and use the "Erase Utility", it erases all past settings from BIOS, NVRAM and hard drives. I then go into the BIOS menus to change the default operating system from "Windows" to "Other OS", and then initialize the RAID controller for the hard drives that I have installed. When installing OpenBSD 3.8, the installer detects my first RAID1+0 disk on the SmartArray 5 controller (ciss0) and uses it as "sd0". After installing, the boot loader works when I reboot. I'm sure someone else will run into this problem, so I'm posting my info to misc@ so that someone else in the future will find it using the "search" functionality on the mail lists. / Eric Ziegast
