[5529] in Release_7.7_team
stock answer for install problems with Dell gx620 for both Athena and RHEL
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (andrew m. boardman)
Thu Jul 13 15:31:48 2006
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 15:31:37 -0400
Message-Id: <200607131931.k6DJVb2N009620@pothole.mit.edu>
From: "andrew m. boardman" <amb@MIT.EDU>
To: wdc@MIT.EDU
CC: release-team@MIT.EDU
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[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.)
