Re: kern/44886: Support for Dell PowerEdge M710

["Michael L. Hitch" <mhitch%lightning.msu.montana.edu@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR kern/44886; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: "Michael L. Hitch" <mhitch%lightning.msu.montana.edu@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: kern/44886: Support for Dell PowerEdge M710
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 11:20:02 -0600 (MDT)

 On Thu, 21 Apr 2011, David Holland wrote:
 
 > From: David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>
 > To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
 > Cc:
 > Subject: Re: kern/44886: Support for Dell PowerEdge M710
 > Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 09:07:03 +0000
 >
 > On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 06:40:05AM +0000, 
 > 6bone%6bone.informatik.uni-leipzig.de@localhost wrote:
 >  >  > Some things to try if you get a chance:
 >  >  >
 >  >  >    - booting with acpi disabled (boot -2 from the bootloader)
 >  >  >    - booting uniprocessor (boot -1 from the bootloader)
 >  >  >    - booting with usb devices disabled (boot -c, then "disable usb"
 >  >  >      should do it)
 >  >
 >  >  you can find the results at https://suse.uni-leipzig.de/netbsd/
 >  >
 >  >  booting without any option, -1 and -2 results in the same problem.
 >  >  "disable usb" has an other problem.
 >  >
 >  >  the Dell PowerEdge M710 is a Blade and do not have any disk or floppy
 >  >  device. the installation runs over the DRAC Management Card. It provide a
 >  >  virtual console and a virtual dvd. maybe this device is an usb device so
 >  >  the "disable usb" option is a problem.
 >
 > But, it does finish booting the kernel, so it seems reasonable to
 > conclude that the problem is usb-related. (this is not exactly
 > surprising)
 
    Contrary to the followup message (which I had already deleted), it 
 appears to me that the kernel is stopping at the same place in all cases.
 It looks like there are two separate problems.  The first is that it does 
 not seem to be able to detect the root/boot device (which I presume should 
 be cd0), and prompts for the root device.  The second problem then is 
 likely that the console is unable to read from the keyboard.  [If the 
 active keyboard is a virtual usb keyboard, then disabling usb will 
 certainly fail;  in addition, if the cd0 device is also a usb device, 
 disabling usb would also not work.]
 
    I don't know how much different the M710 DRAC is from the M610, and it's 
 been so long since I was able to play with an M610 blade with the iDRAC 
 that I can't remember if I was able to boot with a virtual CD and use the 
 iDRAC console.  I initially used an external USB DVD drive connected to 
 an M610 usb port, and we had a keyboard and VGA display at the time.  I 
 think I was also able to boot off a usb flash drive as well.  I've been 
 waiting for our test blade to become available, and when it does, I can 
 try some things with our M610.
 
 Mike
 
 --
 Michael L. Hitch                       mhitch%montana.edu@localhost
 Computer Consultant
 Information Technology Center
 Montana State University       Bozeman, MT     USA