RE: jessie won't install/boot on a Dell Poweredge R815
> Are you certain that there isn't a PERC H700 in this machine? [Sort of
> odd that mpt2sas is triggering a state error in your screenshot if there
> actually isn't one.]
>
> There could be one. But I probably don't use it. I use software RAID. Dell
> wouldn't sell an R815 without an OS. I think I purchased it with RHEL which
> may have needed the PERC H700. But I never even booted RHEL. The first
> thing I did was a fresh install of squeeze, or maybe wheezy.
We definitely sell PowerEdge systems without an OS and have for quite a while. However, we do limit configuration for higher end systems to include hardware RAID.
There's definitely a PERC controller in there based on <https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2016/06/msg00934.html>
"05:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Falcon] (rev 03)"
I'm not seeing the subvendor/subsystem ID's there but it's presumably the PERC 6/i. If you're really not using it at all, you might be able to pull it out if the driver for it is causing problems. However, I suspect you need it to connect to the drive backplane. Stuart (CCed) may be able to offer some more insight into driver issues you might see.
The SATA controller should only really be in use by the optical drive if present. Some of the mid-tier systems of that generation support SATA drives connected directly to a controller on the motherboard, but support for that under Linux was spotty from my recollection.
> OK. This:
>
> > 00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI
> SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [IDE mode]
>
> makes me think that the SATA controller is in IDE/Legacy mode instead of
> AHCI. In theory, this shouldn't matter, but it's possible that this is
> also a problem. I'd try switching it in the bios and see what happens.
>
> I'll do that in a bit. Before I got your current post, I tried some things in
> response to your previous post. I'll report on that here and then go back and
> try the new things.
>
> Here is what I did.
>
> I had a fresh minimal USB install of wheezy running. That install was done
> with debian-wheezy-DI-b1-amd64-netinst.iso from Jul 15 2012. I also put
> the non-free firmware on the USB. When I did that, I unchecked all of the
> boxes during the install for any extra packages. The only thing that I installed
> after that was
>
> apt-get install less
>
> I then did
>
> nano /etc/apt/source.list
> (change all wheezy to jessie)
> apt-get update
> apt-get dist-upgrade
>
> I answered all of the defaults.
>
> (default) all
> (default) no
> (default) cron
>
> I captured this with
>
> script -t 2>upgrade-jessie1 time -a ~/upgrade-jessie1.script
>
> (My mistake. I forgot a period between upgrade-jessie1 and time.)
>
> http://upplysingaoflun.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/time
> http://upplysingaoflun.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/upgrade-jessie1
>
> You can see that it all worked.
>
> You can see that at the end I did
>
> apt-get install firmware-linux
>
> dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
> # default
> # default
> # check all /dev/sd?
>
> and it all worked.
>
> You can also see that at the end I did
>
> cat /proc/mdstat
>
> and all 6 components of both md0 and md1 were there.
>
> Then I did and
>
> /sbin/reboot
>
> The first reboot failed. It gave a similar screen as to the one that you already
> saw.
>
> Then I did a second reboot, with delay=20. That did the same.
>
> Then I did a third reboot, with rootdelay=20. That worked. I got a login
> prompt, logged in, and got a root shell.
>
> At that point, I did a
>
> cat /proc/mdstat
>
> and all 6 components of both md0 and md1 were there.
>
> Then I did a
>
> dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
>
> My intent was to add rootdelay=20 to the command line. But I got lots of
> errors while doing so. I realized that I should have done this under script.
> So I did
>
> script -t 2>upgrade-jessie2.time -a ~/upgrade-jessie2.script
>
> (this time with the period) and redid
>
> dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
>
> and also did
>
> cat /proc/mdstat
>
> and attempted
>
> mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sda1
> mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdb1
> mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdc1
> mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdd1
> mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sde1
> mdadm /dev/md0 --add /dev/sdf1
>
> but these all failed.
>
> http://upplysingaoflun.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/upgrade-jessie2.script
> http://upplysingaoflun.ecn.purdue.edu/~qobi/upgrade-jessie2.time
>
> The machine is now in the state left at the end of the above script. If you
> want me to do some more things in this state, let me know. Or I can do a
> fresh USB install of wheezy and rebuild md0.
>
> > What does the kernel output while it is detecting the disks and
> > partitions?
>
> Remove the quiet option from the kernel command line by editing it in
> grub.
>
> I will do this next time.
>
> > Do all of the drives show up properly?
>
> echo /dev/sd*; should give you an idea of what is there in the initramfs.
>
> I will do this next time.
>
> > When the boot fails, can you read from the underlying block
> > devices?
>
> more /dev/sda; should work, I believe.
>
> I will do this next time.
>
> > I don't know what one can do in at the initramfs command prompt. If
> you give
> > me some commands, I will try them out and post the output.
> >
> > Does specifying delay=20 or similar result in a successful boot?
>
> > I will try this.
>
> This should actually be rootdelay=20; sorry.
>
> Done. See above.
>
> > I will try to get this info. It will require me to redo the exercise
> > of a fresh jessie install from USB. I'll have to take and post screen
> > pictures because I have no way to capture the console output.
>
> I believe the R815 still has a serial port; you can just plug in a
> serial cable and append an appropriate serial tty option to the kernel
> command line to get output as text.
>
> I figured out how to use script. That will work for most situations.
>
> What I'm trying to do is get enough information so that the error is
> obvious.
>
> Thanks. Let me know what you want me to try next. Do you still wish me to
> do the following?
>
> > What does the kernel output while it is detecting the disks and
> > partitions?
>
> Remove the quiet option from the kernel command line by editing it in
> grub.
>
> > Do all of the drives show up properly?
>
> echo /dev/sd*; should give you an idea of what is there in the initramfs.
>
> > When the boot fails, can you read from the underlying block
> > devices?
>
> more /dev/sda; should work, I believe.
>
> Should it be with or without rootdelay=20?
>
> Jeff (http://engineering.purdue.edu/~qobi)
--
Jared Domínguez
OS Architect
Linux Engineering
Dell | Client Software Group
Reply to: