[5530] in Release_7.7_team
Re: stock answer for install problems with Dell gx620 for both
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Heather Anne Harrison)
Fri Jul 14 08:13:28 2006
Message-ID: <20060714081320.7rkagdtdu46ccocw@webmail.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 08:13:20 -0400
From: Heather Anne Harrison <aurora@MIT.EDU>
To: "andrew m. boardman" <amb@mit.edu>
Cc: wdc@mit.edu, release-team@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <200607131931.k6DJVb2N009620@pothole.mit.edu>
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Here are the stock answers. Let me know if they need any
updates. The information on the actual problem seems a bit
scant.
http://itinfo.mit.edu/answer.php?id=8150
http://itinfo.mit.edu/answer.php?id=8151
Heather Anne
aurora@mit.edu
Quoting "andrew m. boardman" <amb@MIT.EDU>:
>
> [As requested by wdc, here's a basic stock answer for the gx620 install
> issues. This should be enough for someone with a minimally pointy hat,
> but feel free to flesh it out as desired. Note that there's a faint hope
> that the RHEL4 problem will go away with the next quarterly update due
> any day now, the Athena problem may go away if we get some lovin' in the
> next 2.4 kernel update and I build a new installer based on that, and the
> whole concept of the Athena install working at all on the gx620 is based
> on the currently-dev-cell-only installer volume.]
>
> The Dell gx620 has some hardware that our software options haven't quite
> caught up with, and (as of July 2006) some special (but easy) steps are
> necessary for a successful install on this platform.
>
> 1) For stock RHEL4, the install won't configure X properly. Do the
> install in text mode (once the machine starts booting from the install
> CD, there will be on-screen instructions for this), and when the
> install is complete edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and replace the display
> driver spec of "radeon" with "vesa".
>
> 2) For Athena, you'll need to change a BIOS option. Boot the machine and
> press F2 during the startup sequence to enter setup mode. From the
> main setup page, use the up/down arrow keys to select "Drives" and
> press Enter, then select "SATA Operation" and press enter. Use the
> left/right arrow keys to select "Combination" (instead of the default
> of "Normal") and press Enter. Press escape to end setup mode, then
> "Save/Exit" to confirm your changes. After this, you should be able
> to install normally, and you can switch the SATA mode back to "Normal"
> after the install if desired. (The Athena installer will
> automatically deal with the X problem described above.)
>
