Installing Fedora Core 5 on a DL380 G1 Compaq Server

I am building a new web server to eventually house the Stevenson Family website and other websites that I run. Since the old server runs a rather outdated version of RedHat Linux I decided to install the latest version of Fedora Linux on the new hardware.

The struggles began when I ran the first FC5 install CD and the error "No hard drives have been found you probably need to manually choose drivers for the installation to succeed" came up. I was sure that I had drives in the array properly configured using SmartStart. I searched for untold hours for an answer, sure that someone else had run into the same problem and had the solution. I was able to find two other people who ran into the same problem, one trying to install to a DL380G1 and the other trying to install Fedora 5 on a DL360G1. They both were installing on Compaq servers with the Integrated Smart Array Controller. Neither had posted a solution. I decided to move on and install Fedora 4 and try to upgrade to 5.

The FC4 install went well using the network install method. This is cool in that one doesn't have to download and burn all five CD's, just the first. You then specify an FTP or HTTP location to download from during the install. You simply specify the packages you wish to install and the install gets them from the FTP site during the installation.

Fedora 4 installed just fine and I used yum to update all the packages using 'yum update'. I then ran rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-5-5.noarch.rpm to get the latest kernel rpm and ran 'yum upgrade' to upgrade everything, including the kernel. Upon reboot I found that I was still having array issues as it would not boot past the array.

I went back, deleted the array and decided to just install FC4 and be done with it. I searched one last time for clues and found this:

"Having difficulty installing Fedora Core 5 on a 1st generation DL360 with the integrated
cmqarray controller? Perform the installation using the noprobe option. The hardware probing
process failts fails to load the correct raid controller module. When asked, you will need
to specify the cpqarray module from the list of available drivers."
--http://www.galwayland.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=14.

This seemed to be the answer as it let me move past the array problem in the FC5 installation. I specified linux noprobe acpi=noirq askmethod at the prompt of the FC5 install. The acpi=noirq argument got me past a CD-ROM error "hda lost interrupt" that had befuddled me for a while. I had to select the Intel NIC when asked and had to choose the Smart/2 Array (cpqarray) when asked but it seems to have done the trick.


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