8<----
Out of curiosity, has anyone experience of running a Dell PowerEdge R410 under NetBSD 5 ? I'm struggling to install a hosted dedicated server of this type, and for the moment I don't know if it's related to a bug on the iDRAC (that is known to the hoster when you use virtual media to mount an ISO image on the console over a fairly slow ADSL) or whether there is an issue booting the kernel that won't even be solved by using physical media.
8<----Having taken the iDRAC out of the issue, I now boot the iso from an image on the partition using MEMLINUX booted from GRUB. I realise this is a convoluted way of doing things, but it's the only workaround I've found for not being able to get physical media in the server, and not having to use the virtual media feature of iDRAC which is known to the hoster to corrupt ISO images.
Anyway, the top and bottom of it is that NetBSD and the Dell PowerEdge R410 seem to hate each other. The install kernel starts to load but very early on (before the green console text usually, or just after the Regents of the University of California) then the whole machine freezes (IPMI connection is even lost). It's difficult to troubleshoot further as even my virtual console window disappears, and it requires a technician from the hoster to go and physically restart the machine. (BTW, I think they're starting to hate me :/ )
This behaviour is the same from a normal install boot and booting without ACPI and SMP.
I really wanted to try Xen on this box with NetBSD dom0, but it looks like I'm going to have to use ESXi to do something useful with the machine :( unless anyone has any further ideas for me to try.
Best regards, Phil