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BenConrad
Expert
Expert

Kickstart: Disk device name changes on HP BL460c G6 with p410i

We just got some 2.93GHz HP Proliant BL460c G6 blades, the Kickstart script halted stating there were no disks in the system. Upon further investigation it seems the Smart Array P410i controller is using a different driver.

We've changed the the following in our Kickstart:

- Any entries starting with 'part'

- bootloader

- ignoredisk. Had to exclude sda in --ignoredisk

Historically, HP SA controllers used the 'cciss' driver:

vmkload_mod -l | grep -iE "cciss|hpsa"

cciss 0x8ae000 0x7000 0x290d140 0x2000 3 Yes

fdisk -l /dev/cciss/c0d0

Disk /dev/cciss/c0d0: 146.7 GB, 146778685440 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 17844 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Now some or all of the newest controllers are using the 'hpsa' driver

vmkload_mod -l | grep -iE "cciss|hpsa"

hpsa 0x961000 0xa000 0x2956da0 0x10000 4 Yes

fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 73.3 GB, 73372631040 bytes

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 8920 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

HTH somebody....

Ben

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Engelsman
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Ben,

Are you using HP RDP (Altiris), or another deployment tool? I'm very interested in your kickstart script and/or changes to RDP.

is this what you are doing now in your kickstart script: (example) part /boot --fstype ext3 --size --asprimary --ondisk sda

?

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BenConrad
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Hi,

I'm just using plain ol kickstart. I boot my server off CD and then start with 'esx ks=http://mywebserver/ks.txt' and it get's a dhcp address and off we go.

Current layout using p410i looks like:

part /boot --fstype ext3 --size 250 --ondisk=sda --asprimary

part / --fstype ext3 --size 5000 --ondisk=sda --asprimary

part swap --size 1024 --ondisk=sda --asprimary

part /var --fstype ext3 --size 7000 --ondisk=sda

part /tmp --fstype ext3 --size 2048 --ondisk=sda

part /home --fstype ext3 --size 1024 --ondisk=sda

part None --fstype vmkcore --size 104 --ondisk=sda

One thing you can do is run through a text installation of ESX by hand and the Anaconda installer actually creates a kickstart file that is left in /root.

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Engelsman
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Thanks for your reply Ben.

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