Installer Compatibility Table

This table is a community maintained matrix of DebianInstaller builds and their compatibility with various HP ?ProLiant systems. This page does not infer official support from HP. Information on official HP support offerings for Debian can be found on [http://hp.com/go/debian http://hp.com/go/proliantdebian].

?Anchor(hpde)

HPDE Builds

Contact DannFrazier to obtain an HPDE installer build

?Anchor(daily)

Daily Builds

Daily builds are available from the [http://www.us.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/ d-i devel page]

Issues

Virtual Media Disconnect crashes kernel

Kernel crashes have been observed when ejecting Virtual CD-ROM media is ejected, even when the media is umounted. The suggested workaround is to shutdown the OS before ejecting the Virtual CD-ROM. Observed on an iLO 2 system running kernel-image-2.6.8-12-amd64-generic (2.6.8-16sarge5hpde1).

Remote Serial Console hangs

The boot sequence has been observed to hang when Linux is configured to use the Remote Serial Console. Sending data to the serial console (e.g., pressing enter) will allow the console output to proceed. Observed on an iLO 2 system running kernel-image-2.6.8-12-amd64-generic (2.6.8-16sarge5hpde1).

Panic loading cciss driver

The em64t-p4 flavor kernel has been observed to panic when attempting to load the cciss driver:

 SCSI subsystem initialized
 HP CISS Driver (v 2.6.10)
 cciss: using DAC cycles
 ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:06:00.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
 cciss cciss0: SendCmd Invalid command list address returned! (2)
 ciss cciss0: SendCmd Timeout out, No command list address returned!
 cciss: unable to determine firmware version of controller
 cciss cciss0: SendCmd Invalid command list address returned! (2)
 cciss cciss0: SendCmd Timeout out, No command list address returned!
 cciss: report logical volume command failed
 Using anticipatory io scheduler
 pivot_root: No such file or direKernel panic: Attempted to kill init!
 ctory

If you experience this problem, it is recommended to use the amd64-generic kernel instead.

Grub fails to install

Two different issues have been observed to cause this problem:

• The Debian 2.6.8 kernel has a [http://dannf.org/bloggf/tech/cciss-grub-real-fix.html bug] in the block layer that causes certain ioctls to fail. The HPDE installer includes the fix for this bug.

• Grub may also fail if the partition that holds /boot extends past the first 512MB. You can identify this situatin by choosing "Execute a Shell" in the main menu and running 'cat /target/tmp/grub*'. If you see the message Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS, try creating a separate /boot partition that resides within the first 512MB of your disk. This has only been observed with the i386 installer.

• Debian-installer gets an error during GRUB install. Using grub manually yields:

grub> root (hd0,0)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
 Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... no

Error 15: File not found

• Mounting this partition showed that the grub files had been copied to the appropriate places (/boot/grub/stage1, etc.). I tried using the 'install' command directly and used tab completion to find the stage1 image by starting out with '(hd0,0)/' and hitting tab. Doing so only displayed '(hd0,0)/lost+found/'. It seems that there was caching going on somewhere such that the RAID controller drivers were reading the files (so Linux could see them) but grub couldn't see them yet. I rebooted and started the setup over again making sure to leave the /boot filesystem intact and the partitioning intact. Having done so, the GRUB Install portion of setup was successful.

debootstrap fails

There has been a report of a "debootstrap error" message while installing a ?ProLiant with a burned netinst ISO. This is believed to be caused by an issue with reading the burned media. Installing using iLO virtual media, or by [http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch04s06.html.en netbooting the installer].

AMD system doesn't detect NIC/Smart Array controller or panics with "PCI-DMA: high address but no IOMMU"

Try passing pci=nommconf as described [http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/linux/k8-notes.html here].

Automatic partitioning detects disk, but fails to partition

The guided partitioning option "use entire disk" in the sarge installer may fail on very large logical disks (>1 TB). It is still possible to use the entire disk, but you will have to partition the disk manually instead of using the guided option. See [http://bugs.debian.org/412624 #412624] for details.