Toralf Lund wrote:
I'm trying to install CentOS 5.5 on a couple of servers of type IBM
System x3550 M3, but it's not going too well. Actually, the install
setup phase runs as expected, and the actual installation also appears
to be successful, but the system will not boot [ ... ]




            
              
                
Make sure all the firmware is up to date. I've had an IBM x3550 M3 and it couldn't even boot a Windows 2008 R2 64 bit CD with the firmware it shipped with.


          
            
              
That seems like a useful tip, but do you know what exactly I need to
install and where to find it? I'm looking at an IBM download page right
now, but it's a little confusing - I can't seem to find anything that
it's obviously the *system* firmware, only entries like "Firmware for
Rack&   Tower LCD UPS" and " Firmware for Local Console Manager".

- Toralf

          
            
What's the model and type? It should be xxxx-yyy where x can be 0-9 and y can be 0-9&  A-z.  You can find it on the front of the chassis.

  [ ... ]
          
Search for UEFI firmware. Those IBM servers don't have a classic BIOS anymore, they are EFI based. I looked it up following your model/type and found the updates.


http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/systemx/quickorder?parent=ibm/Systemx3550M3&product=ibm/systemx/7944&&platform=All&function=fixId&fixids=ibm_fw_uefi_d6e149a_linux_32-64&source=fc
  
    
      
Ah. Thanks.

I believe I missed that file because I searched for operating system 
independent components (because firmware doesn't use the OS, right?), 
but apparently I should have chosen some Linux variant instead.
  
    
I should perhaps mention that I found a solution, sort of: It seems like 
the problem is that the system simply won't boot from a single hard disk 
set up as just that - a single, separate drive. I suspect this has 
something to do with the disk/RAID controller firmware, but updating it 
did not help. If, on the other hand, I define (from within the 
controller setup screen) a "RAID" containing only one drive, everything 
works just fine...
  
Try nodmraid on the kernel line in grub - I needed this after one of the upgrades in the 5.x series.
- Toralf

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