HP Proliant 380 G4 / SmartArray 6 / HP driver / No Floppy disk.
Hello!
And here I am with a "nice" problem:
I want to run Solaris on a HP Proliant 380 G4 series with SmartArray 6. HP kindly provide drivers for Solaris 10 on their homepage. Those drivers need to be extracted to a floppy disk. Now here is where the trouble starts: I do not have a floppy disk drive for ther server nor is it easy to just plug one in. I've tried a USB floppy disk drive which at least got me as far as the first part of the installation. It then fails when it tries to actually install the driver onto the system as it does not know anything about USB drives.
I somehow need to inject the driver to the system without having a floppy drive. I'm not sure if you can do this on installation or by somehow copying the files onto the installation ISO or using jumpstart.
Any clues or hints how this might work would be very much appreciated. I'm sitting here with my head spinning.
Thank you very much,
Georg
# 1
<table border="0" align="center" width="90%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td class="SmallText"><b>rogerisland wrote on Thu, 02 June 2005 19:14</b></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">
. It then fails when it tries to actually install the driver onto the system as it does not know anything about USB drives.
</td></tr></table>
That is, you can boot Solaris from the install CD (or DVD) together with
HP's driver from the ITU floppy in the USB floppy drive, and copy Solaris to
the raid array. And after that, the Solaris installer tries to mount the ITU floppy
(to copy the raid array driver from the floppy to the raid array), but fails
because no PS/2 floppy device /dev/diskette is present?
It should be possible to manually mount the USB floppy media, and
manually install the raid array driver to the raid array.
1. tell the installer that you do not want the automatic reboot at the end of
the installation - choose the manual reboot option
2. when installation has finished (and the attempt to mount the ITU from
the PS/2 floppy device has failed), open a terminal window, run
"iostat -En" to find out the solaris device name for the USB floppy device.
Let's assume the USB floppy device is listed as disk "c2t0d0" in iostat -En
output
3. mount the ITU floppy:mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c2t0d0p0 /mnt
4. Use the install.sh script on the floppy to install the driver:
/mnt/DU/sol_210/i86pc/Tools/install.sh -l
or
/mnt/DU/sol_210/i86pc/Tools/install.sh -R /a -i drv1 drv2 ...
Btw: which Solaris release are you tryingo to install? Old Solaris
releases (8 or older) might have problems with accessing USB floppy
drives. Solaris 10 x86 should have no major issues with accessing an
USB floppy drive.
jkeil at 2007-7-5 17:07:11 >
# 2
>That is, you can boot Solaris from the install CD (or DVD) together >with
>HP's driver from the ITU floppy in the USB floppy drive, and copy >Solaris to
>the raid array. And after that, the Solaris installer tries to mount the >ITU floppy
>(to copy the raid array driver from the floppy to the raid array), but >fails
>because no PS/2 floppy device /dev/diskette is present?
Basically, yes (and I want to install Solaris 10 on x86)
I have to use the console installation (without the GUI) because the interactive one hangs at the end of the disk. Another problem is that the installer tries to copy the driver to the array before disc 1 is finished (after it installed all the files though) where no reboot is attempted.
I'd like to try your suggestion though.
Is it possible to fire up a shell if I use option 3 on the installer (console install in GUI) or interactive shell (option 1) (if it wouldnt hang..but maybe it hangs BECAUSE it tries to access the disk) ?
Thank you very much for your help!
- Georg
# 3
<table border="0" align="center" width="90%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td class="SmallText"><b>rogerisland wrote on Fri, 03 June 2005 11:25</b></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">
>That is, you can boot Solaris from the install CD (or DVD) together >with
>HP's driver from the ITU floppy in the USB floppy drive, and copy >Solaris to
>the raid array. And after that, the Solaris installer tries to mount the >ITU floppy
>(to copy the raid array driver from the floppy to the raid array), but >fails
>because no PS/2 floppy device /dev/diskette is present?
Basically, yes (and I want to install Solaris 10 on x86)
</td></tr></table>
OK, Solaris 10 should have less issues with USB floppy support than
older Solaris 9 or Solaris 8 releases.
<table border="0" align="center" width="90%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td class="SmallText"><b>Quote:</b></td></tr><tr>& lt;td class="quote">
I have to use the console installation (without the GUI) because the interactive one hangs at the end of the disk.
</td></tr></table>
Yep, that's a known bug in the Solaris 10 x86 GUI installer. It didn't
exist in Solaris 9 x86 and older.
When the GUI installer is in use, the final step of installing the extra
driver from the ITU floppy prompts for something on /dev/console,
but with the S10 installer GUI running there's no way to type
/dev/console input.
<table border="0" align="center" width="90%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td class="SmallText"><b>Quote:</b></td></tr><tr>& lt;td class="quote">
Another problem is that the installer tries to copy the driver to the array before disc 1 is finished (after it installed all the files though) where no reboot is attempted.
I'd like to try your suggestion though.
Is it possible to fire up a shell if I use option 3 on the installer (console install in GUI) or interactive shell (option 1) (if it wouldnt hang..but maybe it hangs BECAUSE it tries to access the disk) ?
</td></tr></table>
If the GUI installer is running, right click on the desktop and open a
"Terminal" window, to get a shell.
If you run the "ptree" command when the installation has stopped after
copying the packages from CD1 to the HDD, you should notice the
following processes:
<div class="pre"><pre>2678 /usr/sbin/install.d/pfinstall -f /swap2 -s /dev/dsk/n 9335 sh -c /sbin/sh /tmp/diskette_rc.d/icdinst9.sh9336 /sbin/sh /tmp/diskette_rc.d/icdinst9.sh 9345 sh /tmp/diskette_rc.d/inst9.sh9348 sh /tmp/diskette_rc.d/inst9.sh</pre></div>
The last one ("inst9.sh", PID 9348 in my case), is blocked in a read()
system call waiting for data from /dev/console (this can be verified with
"pstack $pid" and "pfiles $pid").
You can use "kill -9 $pid" to stop that inst9.sh process which hangs the
installer.
Before you kill inst9.sh, manually mount the ITU floppy from the USB
floppy drive and install the raid drivers manually.
Btw.: I'm not 100% sure, but the installation from CD1 is probably
complete anyway and the only thing missing is the raid array driver from
HP's ITU floppy. In this case it should be sufficient to boot into single user
mode from the S10 x86 installation CD/DVD (but don't forget to add HP's
raid array drivers from the USB floppy). At the "select type of installation"
prompt (options 1 .. 4) use "b -s" to boot into CD single user mode.
On the single user shell, mount both the the raid array and the UFS floppy
and use the "install.sh" script on the ITU floppy to install the missing
raid array driver to the raid array.
jkeil at 2007-7-5 17:07:11 >
# 4
Hi, I'm also facing the same problem here, got a DL380G4 without FD and stuck with the USB Floppy.
After my GUI installation stucked at around 14%, I mounted the USB Floppy and tried to install the driver. But the installation failed with the 2 parts of warnings, first it's warning me that 6 core components of Solaris is not installed yet and second warning said that there's no sufficient space to finish the installation.
So in the end I can't complete the driver installation at all.
By the way, I've tried both 1.30 (as reported workable by BigAdmin) and 1.50 (as provided by HP as latest driver)
Any help would be very appreciated.
Thanks a lot.
# 5
<table border="0" align="center" width="90%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td class="SmallText"><b>timmoty wrote on Thu, 25 August 2005 06:11</b></td></tr><tr><td class="quote">
Hi, I'm also facing the same problem here, got a DL380G4 without FD and stuck with the USB Floppy.
After my GUI installation stucked at around 14%, I mounted the USB Floppy and tried to install the driver. But the installation failed with the 2 parts of warnings, first it's warning me that 6 core components of Solaris is not installed yet and second warning said that there's no sufficient space to finish the installation.
</td></tr></table>
The new Solaris root disk is mounted on the directory "/a" during installation.
Did you use the "-R /a" argument for the install.sh script on HP's ITU floppy,
to tell HP's installer to install the driver on the root filesystem mounted at /a ?
jkeil at 2007-7-5 17:07:11 >
# 6
Hi j.keil,
It works fine now.
Just to recap, maybe usefull for others.
These are the steps I went through:
1. Add Driver via DCA
2. Choose Interactive Install
3. Complete configuration, I used Automatic Reboot and Eject
4. Installation stuck at 14% as expected
5. Open new terminal, by right-click on destop and choose program
6. "su root"
7. use "iostat -En" to check the USB Floppy, mine is "c1t0d0"
8. "mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c1t0d0p0 /mnt"
9. "/mnt/DU/sol_210/i86pc/Tools/install.sh -R /a -i cpqary3"
10. After installation completed, I use "ptree" to locate the hanged process, which is actually asking for a diskette to be inserted.
11. Kill any "inst9.sh" processes, I think there's always two of such process, DO NOT kill "icdinst9.sh" processes (which I did once and failed all the efforts).
12. After the kill system will resume as per normal and you'll be asked to reboot.
13. After reboot just make sure the CD 1 is no longer inside and SUN should be able to boot from the RAID Controller and continue the installation to CD 2.
Thanks for all the help.
Best regards,
Timmoty
# 7
I just installed a HP proliant 385 / Smart Array 6 with solaris 10 x86 .I follow all instrcutions in this forum and it works perfect,Thanks for share this info.Jairo
