RHEL/CentOS on ATCA

Submitted by katti on Wed, 2007-05-02 12:02.
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Hi,

Not really an OpenClovis specific question, but maybe somebody around here can give a few hints... :)
Does anybody have experience installing RedHat Enterprise Linux or CentOS on ATCA blades ?? (Wainwright/Intel, to be more specific). I'm asking because according to the download page, the ATCA version supports only these, but apparently there's no info about this on RH's or CentOS's webpage/docs. My primary concern is that there is no video device... can the RHEL/CentOS install tool handle the serial as console? (if I manage to boot the install system like that...:) Also, there's no DVD drive or something like that, only the onboard HDDs. (oh, but there's USB... can the install CD/DVD be booted from a USB DVD drive?)

Currenly I have a very minimal Montavista CGL running on these beasts, but it seems that there's no chance installing OpenClovis on that one... a lot of required stuff is missing.

Any help/link/info is appreciated... :)

Thanks,
Atti

Solaris Support ›
RHEL/CentOS on ATCA
Submitted by saunders on Thu, 2007-06-07 11:15.

Hi Atti,
I was able to install CentOS4.5 on an Intel MPCBL0001 ATCA blade. Just make sure when you boot you add the kernel option for serial console port, as in: "boot: linux console=ttyS0,9600 text". The install detects missing keyboard, CD, graphics, etc. and configures properly. I didn't have to do any custom kernel build at all.

I used CentOS4.5, since the OpenClovis eval supports RHEL4 targets, and CentOS4.x is free equivalent.

Unfortunately, I am still getting an error when starting sisp on the blades. Namely:
insmod: error inserting '.../clIoc.ko': -1 Invalid module format

I was hoping that this would go away when I installed CentOS4.5 (instead of the previous FC5). So more investigation to get OpenClovis running on my ATCA targets...

RHEL/CentOS on ATCA
Submitted by katti on Fri, 2007-06-08 00:17.

Hi Saunders,

In the meantime I also managed to install CentOS 4.4 on the blade :D By the way, the RHEL 4 System Admin Guide (http://www.centos.org/docs/4/html/rhel-sag-en-4/index.html) helped me a lot, there is lots of useful info about PXE booting and network installations.

On the other hand, I also had exactly the same problem with the kernel module. Well, I'm not a kernel module expert, but I found out that the 'vermagic' of the module does not match my kernel.
I have:
vermagic: 2.6.9-42.EL 686 REGPARM 4KSTACKS gcc-3.4.

So if I boot the 2.6.9-42.EL kernel (the non-SMP version - the one which is shipped with CentOS 4.4) then the module loads correctly and everything's fine.
I still have to find out how to build the module to work with the SMP kernel (or other version).

Best regards,
Atti

RHEL/CentOS on ATCA
Submitted by saunders on Fri, 2007-06-08 08:33.

Thanks for the non-SMP tip. That works for me also. And like you I also have to figure out how to tweak the crossbuild stuff in buildtools/ia32-linux-rhel4-2.6.9/src so I can build kernel modules that match my particular SMP kernel.