2008/7/7 Dag Wieers dag@centos.org:

On Mon, 7 Jul 2008, Herta Van den Eynde wrote:

...

I'm trying to install CentOS 5.2 on a Dell PE 1850 via the DRAC 4 card, with CentOS-5.2-i386-bin-1of6.iso mounted as virtual media. At the boot prompt, I hit <Enter>, which should start the graphical installation, but it starts off with a text installation. I am asked

• whether I want to test the media, which I skip
• what language I want to use - I select English
• what keyboard I have - I select us
• the installation method - "What type of media conatins the packages

to be installed?" I have the choice between

• Local CDROM
• Hard drive
• NFS image
• FTP
• HTTP

but not virtual CDROM.

How can I get it to install from the virtual CDROM? (and no, choosing Local CDROM doesn't work).

Because the operating system does not know this is a "virtual" CDROM. The interface looks very real to it. It should work with Local CDROM though.

Well, I tried several times. When I select "Local CDROM", I get a new screen with header "CD Not Found" and text "The CentOS CD was not found in any of your CDROM drives. Please insert the CentOS CD and press OK to retry."

...

Why is the question there in the first place? It got that far using the virtual media, so why not simply continue using it?

I think that fails because for some reason your (virtual) CDROM driver failed to load. Therefor the "generic" boot installation does not detect it is booting from the (virtual) CDROM and asks the question.

Then how can it even start the installation?

...

P.S. CentOS 5.1 doesn't have this issue, but I just erased the 5.1 isos, so I'm hoping that I won't need to reload them all.

It could help us to find out whether this issue exists with RHEL5.2 as well and what the (virtual) CDROM interface is. Is it a USB cdrom device, or some other device ?

Just downloaded Red Hat EL 5.2, and it has the same issue. I suppose this means I have to take it up with Red Hat?

I don't understand how DRAC works. I download the iso image to the harddrive of my PC, connect to the DRAC using a webbrowser (over https), and select to serve that iso image as a virtual CD-ROM. I once tried to serve an iso image to a system that was already installed, hoping to be able to use it on the system, but I never found out to what device file it got connected.

Kind regards,

Herta

-- -- dag wieers, dag@centos.org, http://dag.wieers.com/ -- [Any errors in spelling, tact or fact are transmission errors]

Herta Van den Eynde wrote: up with Red Hat?

I don't understand how DRAC works. I download the iso image to the harddrive of my PC, connect to the DRAC using a webbrowser (over https), and select to serve that iso image as a virtual CD-ROM. I once tried to serve an iso image to a system that was already installed, hoping to be able to use it on the system, but I never found out to what device file it got connected.

At least in HP and Supermicro Virtual CDROMs the virtual CDROM is presented as a USB device. I haven't tried installing CentOS or RHEL using this method but have installed VMWare ESX just fine.

The system can boot off the virtual CDROM because the bios does the right redirection stuff to help it boot. Once a 32 or 64-bit system fires up there's no access to that low level stuff anymore and you need a real driver. It sounds like the USB chipset in the system is not supported by the kernel.

If you can, boot using a serial console so you can capture the output of the bootup, and note what USB drivers are loaded, and what additional drivers are loaded once anaconda(installer) fires up.

But it sounds like your best off doing a network installation, which is pretty easy to setup, there's tons of docs out there.

nate

2008/7/7 MHR mhullrich@gmail.com:

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 2:54 AM, Herta Van den Eynde herta.vandeneynde@gmail.com wrote:

...

I'm trying to install CentOS 5.2 on a Dell PE 1850 via the DRAC 4 card, with CentOS-5.2-i386-bin-1of6.iso mounted as virtual media. At the boot prompt, I hit <Enter>, which should start the graphical installation, but it starts off with a text installation. I am asked

This is normal for the graphical installation.

Is it? 5.1 starts up an X-server and asks these questions in a graphical screen.

...

• whether I want to test the media, which I skip
• what language I want to use - I select English
• what keyboard I have - I select us
• the installation method - "What type of media conatins the packages

to be installed?"

This is NOT normal - that's from the network installation option....

Just FYI - I know this isn't the cause of your problem, but thought you should know.

mhr

Thanks, it confirms what I suspected. Now if I only knew why.

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser. After installing 5.1, I mounted the 5.1 iso image through DRAC. /var/log/messages reports "Jul 8 12:56:23 dsrv546 kernel: cdrom: This disc doesn't have any tracks I recognize!" But if I connect the 5.2 iso image, nothing gets logged.

Kind regards,

Herta

2008/7/8 MHR mhullrich@gmail.com:

On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 2:15 AM, Herta Van den Eynde herta.vandeneynde@gmail.com wrote:

...

2008/7/7 MHR mhullrich@gmail.com:

...

This is normal for the graphical installation.

Is it? 5.1 starts up an X-server and asks these questions in a graphical screen.

You might want to check that. IIRC, every time I have actually installed CentOS from the DVD/CD, it goes into the pseudo-graphical text mode for disk test, language and keyboard, and /then/ it starts up the X server to do the rest.

That's how I remember it worked when I installed 4.4 and then 5.0 on my home desktop, 5.1 on my laptop (and once on my aux desktop at home) and 5.2 here at work....

Cheers.

mhr

Within the past month, I've done 5 installs of CentOS 5.1 on Dell servers via their DRAC interface. They all behaved as I described.

Kind regards,

Herta