Ghost problems with IBM xSeries 3

[PGNMAN]

I am using the ServerGuide 6.06 CD to setup the drives. The IBM partition is created and I continue through the ServerGuide version of the Win2k installation (which is bad by the way...) NOTE: I also used UpdateXpress CD v1.04 to update my firmware.

I install Win2k Server and a few apps - we are creating a base image for all of our servers - and then I run SYSPREP and image the partition with Ghost. Then we are installing apps onto the new server that has been created from the image to create machines with exchange, web, infrastructure, application.

I create a Ghost image of the partition - not the entire disk, since I am using this image for serveral models (x342, x360, x232)

On the new machine, I boot with the ServerGuide CD and wipe the drives clean and re-initialize the array. I create a RAID1 set for the OS and RAID 5 the rest of the drives (I have tried different combinations of RAID1 & RAID5 to see if this may have been the problem). I then create the system partition and exit ServerGuide. I boot from a network diskette and map a drive to the share with my image. I run Ghost and click Local/Partition/From Image and then create a partition and pull down the image. When I reboot the machine, I get the message &quot;Windows 2000 could not statr because the following file is missing or corrupt: <Windows 2000 Root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe&quot;

I follow the procedure AGAIN, and put the same Ghost image on top of the same partition I just created, and it starts jsut fine. I have been pestering IBM for 2 months and they have not responded. Any help would be appreciated,

Thank you

Tom Barnett

 

[migglezimblatt]

Anyone having a problem with "no DPMI memory" when trying to ghost machines is basically because DOS (or win98 command line) was never designed to work with the oodles of memory that servers now have. win98 has a limit of 512Mb for example.

Some servers have an "installation mode" that cuts down the (say) 4Gb ram they have to (say) 256Mb so you can do things like this, but some don't. So here's how to get around it:

when booting using your boot floppy (or boot CD) don't bother to try to load HIMEM.SYS, EMM386.EXE or any of that ramdrive or smartdrive nonesense. Just hit F5 (which bypasses config.sys and autoexec.bat completely and run GHOSTE.EXE from your floppy. This has been tested with ghost 7.0 on a compaq/hp ml370 with 5Gb ram and a smartarray 6400 raid5 logical drive.


no extended memory required. no complex config.sys or autoexec.bat required.

remember, you only need drivers in autoexec.bat if your raid controller (be it IBM, DELL or anyone) does not present the RAID "bucket" (logical drive) as drive0 to the system. Sure you won't be able to CD to drive C but when ghost has loaded it will see the NTFS partition.

-Miggy

 

[Willibee]

I have a x365 with a servraid 6m Ghost locks up no matter what I do. I have tried all the config.sys/himem and emm386 tricks still locks up. Any suggestions would be appriciated.

Thanks

Willibee

 

[KiloBite]

Hello everyone I have a IBM XSeries 200 with an 4L raid controller using raid 1 on my 9Gb Mirror & Raid 2 on my 34Gb which I want to use to replace my 9Gb's. The problem I have is that when I use ghost 7.5 it lets me select the source but then it appears to lock up when finding the destination. Can anyone help