No boot after configuring 4lx controller

[fuzzlepop]

Hi all,

Recently bought a server from ebay, came with an IBM 4lx controller. Well I am hoping for some help as I paid quite a bit for this machine and so far can't get it to work.

What I did first was insert the IBM disc to configure the controller. 2 drives were raid1 and 4 were raid5, it gave no warning messages. I then rebooted the machine and put the windows disc in and selected boot from cd, but then it just showed a blank black page with a little underline thing blinking in the corner.

But when I reset the controller and try boot the windows disc then it enters windows setup fine but gets an error as theres no hard drives setup.

I am not sure what I am doing wrong, but it seems when i set the controller up somthing is going on.

Help please!
thanks

 

[ibmtech65]

You need to load the device driver for your raid controller.

 

[fuzzlepop]

Thats what the IBM disk was, I inserted the disc and set it up. Thats when the problem starts...

 

[scsiraid]

That was just array configuration. Now you need to create the driver diskette to give to the OS when it asks if you have drivers for mass storage devices (hit pf6) (I think it is 6). The diskette image is on the ServeRAID CD. What version of CD were you using? 7.12 is latest for 4Lx.

 

[fuzzlepop]

Yes,

But thats the problem, I can't boot any devices once I configure the array so its not possible to do the F6 option when booting windows as I can't boot windows in the first place.

So its a weird situation..

 

[fuzzlepop]

Heres a video of it booting up once I've set the array up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWnN_BXNCEg

 

[ibmtech65]

But when I reset the controller and try boot the windows disc then it enters windows setup fine but gets an error as theres no hard drives setup."

From what you said earlier you were booting to the Windows install CD. Now you say you can't boot to the Windows install CD???

There is a books folder on the servraid manager CD, in it is a PDF called DEVDRV, that will tell you how to create your device driver. Then when prompted on bootup to the OS CD press F6 and you will then be able to install the driver and find the hard drives.

 

[fuzzlepop]

I mean if I don't configure the array it boots to the windows disc, but once I configure the drives it won't boot from disc.

I've tried the F6 with the windows disc when not configuring the drives and it dies because no drives were setup.

 

[scsiraid]

Interesting... I would check system BIOS. Update to latest level. Make sure that boot order has CD before HDD. What version of ServeRAID BIOS/FW is on the card? Is this an IBM server? What MTM?

 

[victorv]

hi,
- Get the last ServeRAID CD (7,8) (8 has 2 CDs)
- Update FW of 4lx at last level
- Update Machine bios
- from this CD, build a F6 boot driver fol 4lx for Windows
2003 and windows 2000 ecc
- Don't build the RAID5 now, you can do when OS is installed
(if you have hot swap disk, you will do it while OS
running)
- Just for test don't build mirror: try to put just 1 disk
and see what happens
- If you build mirror, do it in the evening, leave mirror
synchronize itself during the night, and halt the system
when Locical Volume is OK
- Just for test, try to begin installation also for W2K or
other OS rather than WS2003
- Depending of the above tests, upgrade also the firmware
of the CDROM.

bye