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

[Jeffrey Mark Siskind <qobi@purdue.edu>]

I am attempting to install jessie on a Dell Poweredge R815. It has been
running wheezy reliably for years. And running squeeze reliably for years
before that. But no matter what I try it won't install or boot.

I have tried two ways.

 1. I attempt a fresh install from a USB dongle. It gets all the way to
    installing grub and then fails.

 2. I do a fresh install of wheezy from a USB dongle. It boots wheezy just fine.
    I do nothing but

      nano /etc/apt/sources.list
      (change all instances of wheezy to jessie, save, and exit)
      apt-get update
      apt-get dist-upgrade
      (It upgrades without error. I answer the default to all questions.)
      /sbin/reboot

    Then it fails to reboot and goes into the initramfs. I have a picture of
    the screen if anybody wishes.

I can reliably install and run wheezy over and over. I have not been able to
install or boot jessie despite numerous attempts.

Any suggestions?

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