[clug] Debian and an IBM EServer

[Martin Schwenke]

>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Smith <drs at dreamcraft.com.au> writes:

    Daniel> On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 12:25:34PM +1100, Telek, John wrote:

    >> Does anyone have a Debian install CD that will allow me to
    >> install it on an IBM Eserver.  It's a 2.4Ghz Xeon with an IBM
    >> server raid card in it.  [...] is there a trick to installing
    >> woody 3.0 on it some how.

    Daniel> I think you require the additional driver disk to install
    Daniel> ips.o (The IBM Raid driver).

    Daniel> There's a menu option/prompt for it quite early in the
    Daniel> installer.

I don't think the Debian boot floppies have ips.o.  It is part of the
standard 2.4 kernel, but Debian probably omit it due to space
considerations.

    Daniel> The dual Intel e1000 are not supported in any of the r3.0 kernels
    Daniel> AFAIK.

Depending on the model, the on-board ethernet card might be a
Broadcom, so it would use the tg3 driver.  I don't think tg3.o was in
the last release of Woody's boot floppies either...  :-(

2 possibilities:

* We installed our most recent IBM xSeries server by booting Knoppix,
  partitioning the disk (RAID-5 set really), rsyncing Woody from
  another live box and then changing the hostname in various places.
  Oh yeah, we also compiled a recent 2.4 kernel that included the
  above 2 drivers.

  Pretty easy, no problems since...

* I noticed yesterday that debian-changes was very busy.  This might
  herald a new release of Woody, whose kernel will probably have
  tg3.o... and might have ips.o?

peace & happiness,
martin