Installing Linux RedHat 7.3 on a PowerEdge 4400

Installing Linux RedHat 7.3 on a PowerEdge 4400

[Miguel González Castaños]

dear all,

 I have to install a PE4400 with Linux RedHat 7.3, previously installed
with a Windows 2000 Server in RAID 1-0 configuration.

 Since I am not used to install linux on this kind of servers, only on
PCs, mostly with RAID simulated by software I am bit lost.

 There are a few questions that come to my mind before I am going on
with the installation:

 1. - I always heard that was no good to install swap or / (root)
partitions on RAID (hardware or software) because if any time the RAID
fails, you would not be able to boot the box. Since the current
configuration with Windows is having a mirrored stripped 66 Gb disk (4
SCSI disk drives of 33 Gb), I am wondering if it would be a good idea to
install swap and root partitions on the RAID. I still havent checked if
the system has installed a partition of 32 Mb for utilities from Dell.

 2.- I have read that I need to upgrade the kernel. The kernel provided
with RedHat 7.3 needs to be upgraded because a problem with the ext3
filesystem.

I was considering recompiling a 2.4.20 kernel from sources but I would
like to have the possibility of booting from a modular kernel, How I
upgrade the kernel? In the updates web page of RedHat, there is only
four rpms for the kernel. I have downloaded
kernel-2.4.18-24.7.x.i386.rpm and kernel-source-2.4.18-24.7.x.i386.rpm.
I just need to do a rpm -Uvh?

the PE4400 has 2 Gb of RAM and two P III Xeon processors. I guess that I
have to recompile with the following options:

 - SCSI support. Do I need to specify the controller?
 - RAID support?? as far as I have read through I need to use aacraid
driver.
 - big memory support.
 - multiprocessor.

 Anything else?

Sorry for all these naive questions, but I am very new to this server
world.

Many thanks in advance and sorry for my English

Miguel

RE: Installing Linux RedHat 7.3 on a PowerEdge 4400

[Shaw, Marco]

A good place for Dell/Linux stuff.  The mailing list doesn't produce a lot of volume, but questions are typically answered pretty quickly by others.

http://www.domsch.com/linux/

Marco

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Miguel González Castaños [mailto:mgc@tid.es] 
> Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 7:27 AM
> To: linux-admin@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Installing Linux RedHat 7.3 on a PowerEdge 4400
> 
> 
> dear all,
> 
>  I have to install a PE4400 with Linux RedHat 7.3, previously 
> installed with a Windows 2000 Server in RAID 1-0 configuration.
> 
>  Since I am not used to install linux on this kind of 
> servers, only on PCs, mostly with RAID simulated by software 
> I am bit lost.
> 
>  There are a few questions that come to my mind before I am 
> going on with the installation:
> 
>  1. - I always heard that was no good to install swap or / 
> (root) partitions on RAID (hardware or software) because if 
> any time the RAID fails, you would not be able to boot the 
> box. Since the current configuration with Windows is having a 
> mirrored stripped 66 Gb disk (4 SCSI disk drives of 33 Gb), I 
> am wondering if it would be a good idea to install swap and 
> root partitions on the RAID. I still havent checked if the 
> system has installed a partition of 32 Mb for utilities from Dell.
> 
>  2.- I have read that I need to upgrade the kernel. The 
> kernel provided with RedHat 7.3 needs to be upgraded because 
> a problem with the ext3 filesystem.
> 
> I was considering recompiling a 2.4.20 kernel from sources 
> but I would like to have the possibility of booting from a 
> modular kernel, How I upgrade the kernel? In the updates web 
> page of RedHat, there is only four rpms for the kernel. I 
> have downloaded kernel-2.4.18-24.7.x.i386.rpm and 
> kernel-source-2.4.18-24.7.x.i386.rpm.
> I just need to do a rpm -Uvh?
> 
> the PE4400 has 2 Gb of RAM and two P III Xeon processors. I 
> guess that I have to recompile with the following options:
> 
>  - SCSI support. Do I need to specify the controller?
>  - RAID support?? as far as I have read through I need to use 
> aacraid driver.
>  - big memory support.
>  - multiprocessor.
> 
>  Anything else?
> 
> Sorry for all these naive questions, but I am very new to 
> this server world.
> 
> Many thanks in advance and sorry for my English
> 
> Miguel
> 
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