[rhn-users] RedHat EL 4.0 Booting from Fiber Channel SAN

[Jeremy Stephens]

I have been trying to install and boot RedHat Linux from our SAN and 
have been unsuccessful. I can install and recognize the card fine. I can 
scan for Fiber Devices and detect the controllers as well as the 
presented VDisk and then  partition and install the OS relatively 
easily. However I have been having problems getting the system to boot 
off the Fiber Device after the OS is installed and the system restarts.

In the HBA card settings I have:
HBA Configuration Settings - I have the Host Adapter BIOS enabled.
Selectable Boot Settings - I have the Boot Port Name and LUN of the 
VDisk assigned.
Which as far as I can tell is all I need to do to configure the Fiber 
Channel card correctly.

- My first attempt at doing so was on an older model Dell PowerEdge 4400 
server. I have a QLogic qla2340 installed in a 64bit/66mhz PCI slot. [I 
could not have both the QLogic card installed and the internal RAID 
enabled at the same time]
- My second attempt was using a Dell PowerEdge 2600 server with a 
qla2340 installed in a PCI-X slot and the card running at 133mhz. I 
thought maybe the older PowerEdge 4400 since its almost 5yrs old now 
might not have support in the BIOS for booting off Fiber Channel, on top 
of it not running in a PCI-X slot.

During system bootup the QLogic HBA is recognized, it shows me the boot 
device/disk thats connected to it, and then moves on to configure the 
servers internal RAID. After the on board RAID is configured (where it 
would normal boot of the devices specified in the server BIOS) the 
system freezes. I would normally expect an error saying something along 
the lines of "no boot device found, hit F1 to retry or F2 for system 
configuration". All I get is an empty new line and then nothing.

Am I overlooking something in the configuration thats required to have 
the system boot from Fiber? Do I need to do something special on the 
first boot, like boot off CD and install an RPM for the Fiber channel 
card or possibly rebuild the kernel with Fiber Channel support? I just 
assumed this was taken care of because the card is detected during the 
RedHat installation and it loads the QLA2300 drivers prior to actually 
starting the installation.

Thanks,
-- 
-Jeremy