Installing Redhat ES 4 on Dell Poweredge server. Question about drivers.

M

Mopower

Gawd
Joined
Feb 13, 2006
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I know nothing about Linux. But it's my job to figure out how to install Redhat ES 4 on a Dell Poweredge 1950. During the first part of the graphical install it says there are no hard drives found and that I have to install device drivers. I have the Dell disk with the drivers on it. So I click on Add Device. The GUI says that if I have a disk press F2. I do this and it says "Insert driver disk into /dev/hda and press ok to continue" I'm not sure what /dev/hda is. I can't open the CD drive. Nothing happens when I press the open button. Any help would be appreciated.
 
/dev/hda is an IDE hard disk. Do you know if the system has SAS or SATA hard drives?

You might want to try a newer version of Redhat. If you don't have access to any newer version, try CentOS. It's build from the source packages of Redhat Enterprise Linux, but re-branded for legal purposes.
 
I would assume this is because RHEL 4 is released before the hardware so it doesn't have the drivers loaded into the kernel.

Can you download RHEL 5 or RHEL 6 and try the installer. If it recognizes the drivers then maybe you need to download the RHEL 4.6 ISO which is RHEL 4 with all the latest updates and patches. I am fairly positive you download the 4.6 or whatever the last release of RHEL 4 update X was, it will resolve your issue.
 
It depends on how old your PE1950 server is to determine what build of RHEL you can install. The older generation of the PE1950 server has a PERC 5/i controller, but the later generation has the PERC 6/i.

Find out which controller is in your server by reading the post screen during boot. (the raid bios will be ctrl+r)

Redhat PERC controller support matrix:

Added support for PERC 5:
RHEL 3 update 8
RHEL 4 update 4
RHEL 5 update 0

Added support for PERC 6:
RHEL 3 - no support
RHEL 4 update 6 - (driver available for update 5)
RHEL 5 update 1
 
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