Feedback on the IBM x3400 M3

Hi Anderson,

Can you provide some more information:

 * How does it not boot (any bios error message, boot loader message, etc?)

 * Did you setup your RAID via a bios? What raid card is installed?

 * Does your hardware configuration differ from the certification's components?

 * If you have the time, you may try change bios settings, such as turning
    off raid, etc.

My _hunch_ is that the machine may be using a "fakeraid" setup, where raid is setup in the bios
in the bios but Ubuntu still sees four disks, causing problems at boot. (the bios
and bootloader see the raided disks and trying to load a kernel from the raided
disks, when the kernel was actually only installed on one of the disks).

Hi David,

First of all, I'd to thank you for your detailed explanation. Regarding the problem with boot, the machine reports that it can't find an OS to boot from disk. Perhaps the problem is really related with RAID configuration, which was done via embedded raid card software. Meanwhile, I going to check the hardware list compatibility from Canonical's site for IBM x3400 M3. After that I'll let you know what is the RAID card installed on our machine, and RAID type that OS team has built.

I going to forward to OS team your recommendations. As soon as possible I'll send a feedback about the issue.

Regards,
Anderson

Hi David,

Here are the informations about the RAID model installed on x3400 M3:
- LSI MegaRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller - MFI BIOS Version 4.25.00 (Build May 04,2011)

Others hardware information:
- Processor: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5606 2.4Ghz x 2
- Network: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5716 Gigabit Ethernet

Answering your questions:
* How does it not boot (any bios error message, boot loader message, etc?)
There is no especific error message, only information that OS couldn't be found.

* Did you setup your RAID via a bios? What raid card is installed? The only way to setuo RAID is through MegaRAID embedded software. There is no way to configure RAID through IBM BIOS. The installed RAID card is LSI MegaRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller - MFI BIOS Version 4.25.00 (Build May 04,2011)

* Does your hardware configuration differ from the certification's components? Yes, there as fewer differences between Canonical matrix certification and the machine in use, specially the RAID card model. The matrix certification overview lists IBM ServerRAID M5014, but the installed card is LSI MegaRAID M1015 SAS/SATA.

* If you have the time, you may try change bios settings, such as turning off raid, etc. Tem OS team will turn off RAID.

I hope that these informations can help you to understand our scenario in terms of machine configuration and setup done till now.

Best regards,
Anderson Bestteti

Hello David,

We found out the problem, thanks God. Actually the OS team has installed once again the Ubuntu Server, but they accepted the defaults for disk partitioning. Once the installation was completed the OS was booted fine. After that we have checked out the BIOS' configuration has a disk called Ubuntu. This disk didn't exists on previous installation where the OS team has decided to define the disk partitioning by themselves.

Thank you for your attention.
Anderson Bestteti