Solaris 10 8/07 on Intel SE7520JR2 board

Hi all,

I've been trying unsuccessfully to install Solaris 10 8/07 on an Intel
server with Intel SE7520JR2 system board and Intel SR1400 chassis with
SATA backplane. None of this hardware is in the HCL, so I shouldn't
be surprised at my poor results. I'm hoping that somebody on this
list has experience with this setup, or has some insight into how to
solve the problems.

The install fails very early in the setup process if I do not select a
serial console installation from the Grub menu. The kernel is loaded
and the usual three-line printout identifying the kernel version and
copyright information appears, followed by a warning and error:

WARNING: consconfig: no screen found
Can't find driver for console framebuffer

This stays on screen for about two seconds, and then the server
reboots. The SE7520JR2 board has onboard ATI Rage XL video, which is
supposed to be supported just fine by the vgatext kernel driver.

If I choose to install via serial console, I get past this, and
shortly afterwards I'm presented with the menu of options including
installation, driver update, and single-user mode shell.

The second problem I encounter is further into the install process,
after initially configuring the network, name service, timezone, root
password, etc. As soon as the installer attempts to mount the install
media, it fails to do so, and it turns out that Solaris simply isn't
aware of the presence of a CDROM or DVD-ROM drive (iostat only reports
the hard drives and the miniroot ramdisk). This is true regardless of
whether the drive is on the Primary IDE controller or Secondary IDE
controller.

I think I can bypass this second problem by setting up a network
install server, or possibly by connecting the CDROM/DVDROM externally
via a USB adapter. But I'd rather find fixes for these problems,
instead of just workarounds.

Intel doesn't have Solaris drivers for any of this hardware, of
course, but I can't help but think that it shouldn't be this hard to
get Solaris to recognize the video and IDE controllers -- after all,
it sees the two SATA hard drives on the "third" and "fourth" IDE
controllers, so why can't it see a PATA drive on the primary or second
controller?

If anybody has any insight, I'd love to hear it. Thanks!

Cheers, John Roberts

johniroberts@gmail.com wrote:

> I've been trying unsuccessfully to install Solaris 10 8/07 on an Intel
> server with Intel SE7520JR2 system board and Intel SR1400 chassis with
> SATA backplane. None of this hardware is in the HCL, so I shouldn't
> be surprised at my poor results. I'm hoping that somebody on this
> list has experience with this setup, or has some insight into how to
> solve the problems.
>
> The install fails very early in the setup process if I do not select a
> serial console installation from the Grub menu. The kernel is loaded
> and the usual three-line printout identifying the kernel version and
> copyright information appears, followed by a warning and error:
>
> WARNING: consconfig: no screen found
> Can't find driver for console framebuffer
>
> This stays on screen for about two seconds, and then the server
> reboots. The SE7520JR2 board has onboard ATI Rage XL video, which is
> supposed to be supported just fine by the vgatext kernel driver.
>
> If I choose to install via serial console, I get past this, and
> shortly afterwards I'm presented with the menu of options including
> installation, driver update, and single-user mode shell.
>
> The second problem I encounter is further into the install process,
> after initially configuring the network, name service, timezone, root
> password, etc. As soon as the installer attempts to mount the install
> media, it fails to do so, and it turns out that Solaris simply isn't
> aware of the presence of a CDROM or DVD-ROM drive (iostat only reports
> the hard drives and the miniroot ramdisk). This is true regardless of
> whether the drive is on the Primary IDE controller or Secondary IDE
> controller.
>
> I think I can bypass this second problem by setting up a network
> install server, or possibly by connecting the CDROM/DVDROM externally
> via a USB adapter. But I'd rather find fixes for these problems,
> instead of just workarounds.
>
> Intel doesn't have Solaris drivers for any of this hardware, of
> course, but I can't help but think that it shouldn't be this hard to
> get Solaris to recognize the video and IDE controllers -- after all,
> it sees the two SATA hard drives on the "third" and "fourth" IDE
> controllers, so why can't it see a PATA drive on the primary or second
> controller?
>
> If anybody has any insight, I'd love to hear it. Thanks!
>

I also have one of these motherboards, I think, in an unlabeled 1u blade
box. The BIOS version reported as se7520jr22.

I see the same consconfig error when booting the Solaris 10 8/07 DVD.
Same error also with Solaris 10 update 3. Windows 2003 reports the video
hardware as RAGE XL pci. I'd expect the Solaris vgatext driver should
have worked, and thus far, there are no overrides I have been able to
find for the console= or some other option in the grub screeen that will
get the Solaris booted on this system console, even in text mode. Any
insight here?

So, after fiddling around with the RJ45 (a real annoyance getting the
cable and pin-outs) serial connector, I'm able to boot Solaris 10 over
serial-b at speed 9600 using console=ttyb.

Next problem, no disks found. The board has an Intel RAID controller
that was setup to mirror two 80GB drives. So Solaris doesn't work with
this mystery RAID controller.

As for the CD-ROM, there may be a difference if the drive is master
verses slave on the IDE controller. I wasn't able to even get that far.