8.10 Server on Compaq 360 w/ Smart Array

[mot2thom]

Finally got 8.10 server up and running on a compaq 360G1 with mirrored smart array drives.

Symptom was after a smooth, successful OS install, reboot would fail with no disk activity after the low level hardware check completed (cursor would just blink). Adding to confusion was when mirrors were set up using the Integrated Smart Array Controller (ver. 1.50), 63+ Gb was available but during the OS install, 72+ Gb were available.

Kind of figured the problem was with GRUB, the MBR or Unbuntu not understanding the Array Controller.

Luckly, rebooting into the CD and choosing "rescue mode" provided and avenue to trouble shoot and access the disk.

fdisk -lu /dev/ida/c0d0 showed disk partitioned as:
c0d0p1 as data
c0d0p2 as extended
c0d0p5 as swap in extended

After much googling and trying to reinstall GRUB on /dev/ida/c0d0p1 and adding module cpqarray to the initramfs, I finally got the idea to install GRUB on /dev/ida/c0d0...and it worked...system booted and now I am happy.

Hope this is useful info.

[jszarka]

I am having the exact same problem. What are the steps to installing the Grub on the smart arrary?

[cstork]

Same problem here with a brand new HP Proliant DL380G5 with Smart Array P400i. It seems that the installer has no problems with any of the drivers. Everything is recognized fine as I could confirm from the shell. But it seems that the installer fails to properly set up GRUB. It seems even though it claimed to have installed GRUB, it didnt'. At least /boot/grub/menu.lst didn't show any system specific modifications.

The symptoms are that on boot the BIOS (or, in Proliant lingo, RBSU) complains with
no active partition First I noticed that the only installed partition (the guided setup configured one big partition with a little swap partition) didn't even have the boot flag set. After setting it the BIOS complained with
disk0 partition0, no O/S (paraphrased from memory).

I didn't dig into GRUB to configure it myself yet. (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=887895 seems show the way here.) Instead I successfully tried CentOS 5.2. It recognized everything and configured a smaller 100MB boot partition in front of the hefty ~800GB main partition.

Anyway it seems that contrary to the impression from http://webapps.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/200712-187/ the Ubuntu server does not install on Proliant without some manual intervention. Does that warrant a bug report? Where would I file that? (Actually, I assume that this is a regression from Debian, but I haven't confirmed yet that Etch installs without problems.)

[jahhulbert]

I had a similar issue on a ML 570 with RAID:

Had 2 drives RAID1 and 4 RAID5:

/dev/cciss/c0d0 -> RAID1
/dev/cciss/c0d1 -> RAID5

Installed OK on the RAID1 set and then said no operating system found by the bios when i tried to boot up.

Ubuntu had made:

/dev/cciss/c0d0p1
/dev/cciss/c0d0p2
/dev/cciss/c0d0p3

I restarted with Ubuntu CD and went into a rescue mode on my

/dev/cciss/c0d0p1 (yours may be diff)

I then ran "/usr/sbin/grub-install /dev/cciss/c0d0" and it properly installed grub. Thanks for the help to all forum posters. for some reason the installer doesn't get the grub install correct :o