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IBM BladeCenter Deployment Guide
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© 2006 IBM Version 3.0, 3/10/2006
13.
b instead. This leads to a problem
1.
To boot ered LUN in the
storage arra
• To p
umber the gatekeeper (VCM) LUN to 16 or higher,
2.
tc/lilo.conf file.
t installation and you are unable to boot the server, you
ount the boot LUN so you can make the following
2. c/lilo.conf.
3. t says default=esx.
4. o lines:
f SLES9 mounted via the Management Module.
It would boot from the actual CDROM mounted remotely, and the install.
6. Exit the utility.
7. Press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.
The next time you log in to the X Window System, the remote mouse will work correctly.
Boot-from-SAN fails with Gatekeeper LUN on EMC backed storage – When installing in a boot-from-
SAN configuration on an EMC Symmetrix storage array, the following message appears: “The
partition table on device sda was unreachable. To create new partitions it
must be initialized.” Or after rebooting, you simply see a blinking cursor.
This happens because the Sym
metrix uses LUN 0 as a gatekeeper LUN, which is marked as a
pseudo-device. The Linux installer maps LUN 0 to /dev/sda. When the installer tries to configure
the boot LUN, it is unable to use /dev/sda, so it uses /dev/sd
with identifying the boot loader.
There are two possible solutions to this problem. One solution is to mask or renumber the LUN of the
gatekeeper; the other is to change the boot loader configuration.
Masking or Renumbering the Gatekeeper (VCM) LUN
fro
m SAN, ESX Server requires that the boot LUN be the lowest-numb
y. To accomplish this, you may follow one of two approaches (in order of preference):
revent the installer from attempting to write to this device, EMC recommends masking
the LUN.
1. Initialize the Volume Logix database using the administrative host.
2. Modify the active configuration file to enable the fba flag2. This restricts access to
the Volume Logix database.
• The gatekeeper (VCM) LUN can be assigned a number higher than the boot LUN number.
Current Fibre Channel adapters can boot only from LUN numbers up to 15, so your boot LUN
number must be in the range 0 to 15. Ren
and it won't interfere with the boot LUN.
To renumber the LUN, either contact the vendor for assistance or consult your storage array
management documentation.
Changing the Boot Loader Configuration
Another way to deal with the gatekeeper LUN is to specify in your boot configuration where to find
the boot LUN. This requires editing the /e
the
No e: If you have already completed
should boot from a Linux rescue CD and m
changes.
1. Back up the file /etc/lilo.conf.
Edit the file /et
Find the line tha
After the default line, insert these tw
disk=/dev/sdb
bios=0x80
Use a tab to indent the second line.
5. Exit the editor, saving your changes.
6. Run lilo.
7. Reboot the server. This time, it should boot successfully from /dev/sdb.
4.6 Other Linux Distributions and Blades
We’ve just begun our own testing with SLES 9 and Red Hat 4 on blades in a boot to SAN environment
and we hope to add more material here in the future. At this point, the only new problem encountered was
that our 8832 blade would not boot from the .iso image o
The BladeCenter Deployment Guide is intended as a personal productivity tool. It is not intended to be comprehensive and is provided for
guidance only, on an 'as is basis' without warranty of any kind. Please be aware that its contents have not been certified by IBM.