[5535] in Release_7.7_team
AMENDED: Re: stock answer for install problems with Dell gx620 for both Athena and RHEL
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (William Cattey)
Mon Jul 17 16:54:38 2006
In-Reply-To: <20060714081320.7rkagdtdu46ccocw@webmail.mit.edu>
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Cc: "andrew m. boardman" <amb@mit.edu>, release-team@mit.edu
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From: William Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 16:53:43 -0400
To: Heather Anne Harrison <aurora@mit.edu>
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Throw away the suggestion I sent in the previous email. After I sent
it, I noticed one more thing to change, and decided to propose an
even more refined set of amendments.
In stock answer 8151 make the following 3 changes:
1. Delete the sentence:
The Athena installer will automatically deal with the X problem.
The customers will not see an X problem, so the sentence will just
confuse them.
2. Change the question from being about X to being about the disks,
and include the error message the customers will see:
Q: When I try to install Athena on my Dell GX620, I see the error "No
hard drives have been found."
3. Change the answer intro to:
A: The Dell GX620 has a newer SATA interface than what the current
Athena installer recognizes. You can install Athena if you change
the BIOS setting to enable "Combination" mode on the SATA controller.
-wdc
On Jul 14, 2006, at 8:13 AM, Heather Anne Harrison wrote:
> 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.)
>>
>
>
