Probably a bit of a long shot but I've got a Dell PowerVault 715n and I have no media for it whatsoever. Normally this wouldn't be a problem as I'd just whip out a disc with an OS on it and install it but the
715n is a headless server with just 2 network ports and a serial port, no monitor\keyboard or mouse.
I could manage to get Debian on it but I'm not sure how well it would work with the hardware and how much tweaking I'd have to do to get it to do all the bits I want it to, and I'd have to get a network boot server running as well. What I would like is the original Dell media for it so I can reinstall the original OS (Windows 2000). If anyone has the media and fancies sending\lending\selling it that would be nice. :)
Is there nothing you can download from the dell website to do it? You can download network reinstallation software and instructions for the later powervaults (which dont have any floppy/Cd drives)
On Sun, 22 Jul 2007 01:30:57 +0100, Tom Woods mused:
I've had a look there, all that's available AFAICS is a some BIOS updates and a couple of disk management utilities. I've seen another couple of posts from people with the same problem as me and Dell didn't want to know.
I thought that this one is a NAS server. If it's designed to run without some form of graphics card, then I would expect that there would be a special version of the Windows "OS" with a modified HAL designed to talk to the serial card, followed by management via Windows Terminal Server. I wonder if you could get standard Windows to install using a standard graphics card installed in the PCI slot and then remove it later.
Otherwise, if you want an operating system, generally on funnified hardware you can generally get Ubuntu to install (it has a reputation for good hardware support). Alternatively, FreeBSD is quite well behaved on assorted hardware.
Both have a wide range of precompiled or source level packages and can be installed from serial console. After that, if you want GUI based management, installing VNC will provide that easily.
What services do you want to run that you feel that crossing to the Dark Side is necessary?
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:16:27 +0100, Andy Hall mused:
I thought about that, but thought I'd try the easy option first. I didn't really fancy having to build a PXE server just t install an OS on the server.
Yeah, Googling for combinations of Linux, PXE, 715n and other assorted words seem to infer Ubuntu would be the weapon of choice for this, which is good as I wanted an Ubuntu box somewhere on the network.
Erm, which side is the dark side? Nothing too major is required, just a NAS server with HTTP, FTP and Samba. Nice touch would be to set up a domain and have roaming profiles so I don't keep having to turn 4 PC's on when trying to remember which desktop I saved that important thing on.
How did you get Debian onto it? It doesn't appear that this box has a USB port or anything like that.
Other techniques that may work before resorting to a PXE server:
- Take off lid and see if there is an IDE connector on the motherboard. Boot from CDROM
- Look for a USB connector inside. BIOS may not support booting from it, though.
- Look for a floppy connector and try booting from floppy. Most Linux distributions still have this as an option sufficient that you can boot, bring up networking and a basic installer with FTP access. Once you have that, it's easy.
- Take the boot drive out of the Dell box and temporarily put it into another PC. Load the software onto that. Linux distributions should happily recognise the change in hardware as long as the disk environment is similar. There could be a bit more work with this if the disk subsystem is substantially different, especially if some sort of RAID is involved. Even so, if there is a standard IDE in the Dell box, you might be able to boot from that and then install the OS onto the native disk subsystem.
The "other" side that you were contemplating installing. I suspect that unless you could get the specific stuff, it would be a lot harder installing Billyware than an operating system.
I'm not sure about roaming profiles. IIRC, that's tied into the Active Directory shit although saves the user stuff to a shared personal directory on the Windows server.
It should be possible to achieve something similar on Linux with scripting as part of the logging out procedure. That's when Windows does it anyway.
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:23:35 +0100, Andy Hall mused:
I didn't, maybe I should have worded it dififerently, I meant could as in if I tried I could, but I haven't yet.
That's what I might start playing with next, although if it was all this easy you'd have thought these options would be there from the outset.
Yeah, that option had crossed my mind but there are currently 3 120GB drives (soon to be 4 )which will be on RAID5, bit chicken and egg I think as they are all empty atm with no RAID set up.
Ah, I see.
Well, no-one else seems to have any media so I think it will be Ubuntu, somehow. As long as it's a server for now the profiles and logons can be sorted out later, but I think all Windows does is synchronise folders on logon\off which shouldn't be that hard to achieve.
I remember having roaming profiles a few years ago via some linux system (samba was probably involved somewhere). You need to keep your desktop to a sensible size though, otherwise it takes ages - I stopped mine roaming, since I didn't really need it.
I don't know about Ubuntu but other Linuxes do remote booting from PXE and you might be able to find one that comes as a live distro - Edubuntu? - see Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP)
If that's the case, then don't bother with this option, it will be a PITA.
The other place to take a look is ISOLINUX and its friends.
This is a collection of various initial-start Linux boot environments for different boot environments. The idea is that you get this off the ground and then use it to load and install what you actually want to install.
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