Jumat, 07 April 2006

Converted FreeBSD SMP System to Debian

I decided my Dell PowerEdge 2300 needed to switch from FreeBSD to Debian. I wanted to try using this SMP system to run VMware Server Beta, which runs on Windows or Linux. I'd like to record two notes about how I got this system running Debian with the 2.4 kernel.

First, the Dell PowerEdge 2300 uses a Megaraid RAID system that is not supported by the 2.6 kernel that ships with Debian. I couldn't get the 2.4 version of the installation process to recognize the RAID either, meaning Debian didn't see a hard drive on which to install itself. I found sites like Debian on Dell Servers and considered using custom .iso's for installation. Luckily I found a much simpler solution.

During the installation, after the hardware check failed to find my hard drive, I ran the following commands.


cd /lib/modules/2.4.27-2-386/kernel/drivers/scsi
insmod megaraid.o

That allowed the Megaraid to be recognized, after which a hardware re-check found the RAID and permitted installing the OS.

I had to re-run the install several times. At one point I was getting coredumps during package installation. I originally made progress using the 'expert' installation, which allowed me to select a SMP kernel. At my last reboot I didn't select that option and instead used the standard 'linux' install. That put a non-SMP kernel on my system. I was able to apt-get my way to a SMP kernel, so that didn't cause much trouble.

Second, as far as installing VMware Server Beta went, I used the newest 22874 version and followed my own instructions. (That is why I blog.) I tested the new VMware Server using my latest Sguil VM. After running bunzip2 and tar, I remembered to 'chmod 777 *.vmx' to allow the VM to run in the VMware Server Console. I can report that the Sguil VM runs fine in this new setup.

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