[TriLUG] Mondo users?

[Robert Wagoner]

Janyne,

I'm not 100% certain, but I think you may have to create the Dell
Utility partition on your PE2400 systems in order to satisfy the
idiosyncratic PERC firmware.  It sounds like the boot process isn't
running the loader code from the MBR, so you're not even seeing GRUB
start.

We're running Linux and NetWare on a mix of 2300, 2400, and 2450 boxes
in our shop, and every one has the utilities in the first partition
(type 0xDE, not flagged active) and the OS boot in the second (active)
partition.  Check the partition table on your working 2500s and see if
that's consistent with how you've configured them.  If so, I'd recommend
following the same layout for the 2400s.

You might also want to check that your 2400s are all flashed to the
same revisions of the main BIOS, ESM, PERC firmware, etc.  There might
be feature differences between the master system that you're cloning and
the target for the restoration.  Good luck.
-- 
Robert


>>> janyne_kizer at ncsu.edu 8/21/02 5:12 PM >>>
Do any of you use Mondo (http://www.microwerks.net/~hugo/) for backing
up and/or cloning servers?  I have been using it as part of our
rollout
and it has been very successful on the PowerEdge 2500s, however I am
running into a problem cloning PowerEdge 2400s.  I think that it is
probably a simple GRUB-related problem but I'm at a loss right now. 
Any
insight would be appreacted

I am using mondo 1.43/mindi 0.63 to clone systems that I am installing.

I am running into a problem with the restore going OK but the cloned
system fails to boot when it gets to the GRUB section.

This is what I am doing
- boot system and remove any RAID containers
- create a new RAID 5 container and scrub the drives
- boot from mondo floppy/tape
- select automatic restore
- after restore completes successfully, this is what I get:

PowerEdge 2400
 ESM info is displayed
 System backplan info is displayed
PERC 2/si info is displayed
Waiting for array controller #0 to start...
  RAID container information is displayed
BIOS loaded successfully message is displayed
AIC 7880 info is displayed
SCSI device info is displayed
normally, this is where GRUB would start booting the system but the
boot
process just stops at this point.

I did the mondo restore for a second time with the same results.  I
have
seen this if I forget to put on the utilities partition and there is
no
partition table on the 2500s.  In that case, rerunning mondo resolves
the problem.

I did a new backup of the cloning server and I am doing a third
restore
at this time.  The partitions were created and formatted successfully
and the system is currently restoring.

These are the last few messages from that restore:
all partiions were mounted
reading stream
skipping data disks on stream
restoring from media #1

I have been using these versions of mondo successfully on PowerEdge
2500s for several months now.  This is the first clone of a 2400 that
I
have attempted.  The only difference that I can think if is that we
were
putting utilities paritions on the 2500s and we are not doing that on
the 2400s.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
-- 

Janyne Kizer
CNE-3, CNE-4, CNE-5
Systems Programmer Administrator
NC State University, College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
Extension Information Technology