Tryinh to boot Dell Poweredge 6450 using Knoppix

Does anyone know if it is possible to boot a Dell Poweredge 6450 that has a PERC Raid controller using Knoppix. If it is possible, can someone point me to some documantation.

Thanks,

Tony

Knoppix? The live CD that boot and runs right from CD? Sure, why not, Knoppix doesn't need a hard disk at all.

It should work, I've just done it with a Poweredge 2400 (PERC2/i RAID controller). However I'm not sure if the RAID5 (three SCSI disks) is detected correctly, as the desktop is showing three partitions (sda1, sda2, sda3).

I'd be grateful to know if this is normal in how RAID arrays are detected, and if so what should be mounted? Any special arrangements for RAID?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Havin_it

and if so what should be mounted?

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I wouldn't mount any of those if I were you, at least not with write access. I think it's very likely that this is not a true hardware raid controler, but rather that the raid function is a software one created by a special Windows driver. Unless you had a matching driver for Linux properly installed then you likely couldn't read or write the data correctly (and I would be very sure that I had a good backup before trying). A few suggestions: go ahead and try Knoppix, but run without the hard disk. Use the ram disk, or a usb flash drive if you need one, or even add an ide drive with a fat partition on it for exchanging data between Linux and Windows.

Just to let you know things look a bit more promising on further investigation. I let the server boot off the HDD and was greeted by NT server (a surprise - this box was supposed to be wiped). Once I got around to mounting the 'partitions' I'd previously assumed to be individual disks using the LiveCD, I realised that they actually were partitions: sda1 holding the Dell configuration tools (executables and floppy images); sda2 containing Win NT; and sda3 the large, blank partition.

The Dell/Adaptec PERC/2i card is (appears to be) supported by the aacraid kernel driver (an Adaptec/Red Hat joint effort). I want to find out more about the driver before installing anything on the array, but it seems that other people on various forums have made it work...