THE CD ROM is ide

Boot from CD ROM

Choose graphical install

Then it detects the AIC79xx driver as you mentioned.

Then I choose

English

US

Installed Media Method comes up

And that is where I'm stuck

this almost sounds like motherboard crap issues, problem with drivers at that level.

Hmmm

So from what I gather the onboard IDE driver is not on the ESX server's hardware compat list.

So either I buy a PCI IDE card that is (Q: do you know a brand name?) or I do this network install via FTP.

The network install is two fold, one I have to get the actual redhat drivers for the marvell onboard nic.

I've located the files for linux install but heck If I can get the drivers to load. no red hat?????

I've been doing the extract of files for years and I get how to extract and where to put the files on the root of the disk.

But what gives....this is a challenge.

Here is a little info on the EXTRACT:

The folder extracts to DRIVERINSTALL.

The within there is folders labelled, 2.4 , 2,6 , common , and misc.

I've copied the contects of 2.4 to a disk - tried that - nope.

I've copied the contects of 2.6 to a disk - tried that - nope.

I've copied the contects of common files to a disk without the "H" folder- tried that - nope.

I've copied the contects of H:\ folder to a disk - tried that - nope.

Q: Do I have to edit these text files and manually configure?

I'm a windows guy so I should be able to copy driver to disk and insert disk, am I missing some other work that needs to be done?

I've reviewed red hat linux install, been to both motherboard LAN driver section and MARVELL CHIPSET website as well.

ASUS ( Marvell_5056_Linux.rar )

Version	-	2007/06/14 update

OS	Linux

Description	Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet Driver for Linux.

File Size	714.2 (KBytes)

THEN GO TO MARVELL - WEBSITE ( http://www.marvell.com/drivers/search.do ), find custom driver ( linux it has but no RED HAT )

install_v10.22.4.3.tar.bz2

Both drivers look pretty well the same when extracted.

Any help is great,

I'm starting to think that this on board nic does not have red hat linux drivers.

Again Thank you for your time.

I believe if you can believe this...I THINK IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS USING A DVD PLAYER TO LOAD IT.

I guess you are suppose to use a normal CD ROM to load it, like a generic 52X.

You may want to try to create the VMFS partition and format it manually. In your case you would need to delete the existing VMFS partition and then create a new one. The vmkfstools format command would need to be altered to match your setup.

FDISK - creating a new disk with VMKFSTOOLS

Run fdisk -l to see devices

Run fdisk /dev/sda

If you have to add a VMFS - create the partition (n) then change the type (t) to fb. Then (w) save the changes.

Check fdisk /dev/sda again and list partitions (p) - it should list as fb.

If so , exit and run vmkfstools -C -S "data_store_name" /vmfs/devices/disks/vmhba0:0:0:10