UCS C220 M3 - impossible to install Ubuntu 14.04 OS

[alexandre781990]

Hello all,

I am new to Cisco servers and we have purchased 3 UCS C220 M3 servers.

For one of them, I would like to basically install an Ubuntu OS (14.04). I have tried hard but unsuccessfully to install this OS on the server.

On this server, I have only one physical hard drive because I am not really interested in getting RAID on this server. At first, I booted on a USB stock with the Ubuntu image and installation worked fine. Then, I tried to boot on the hard drive but it was impossible to find the hard drive in the boot menu.

Do you have any clue about this? I suspect that it comes from the fact that the LSI sotfware RAID controller is enabled and one thing to note is that I have no Cisco FlexFlash SD Card installed. Is this mandatory? When I try to configure RAID 0, then I am not able to install ubuntu anymore (impossible to detect disk with Ubuntu Installer).

Thank you for any help!

Alex

[Kirk J]

Greetings.

It sounds like you are switching the onboard/SCU controller from AHCI mode to SoftwareRaid(SR) mode.  Does your Ubuntu installer have the LSI megaraidSR driver present?

Assuming that you have enabled softwareRaid,, configured raid 0 from the Cntrl+M megaraidSR post time utility, have created a boot order entry for localdisk, and see the optionRom load for this, it sounds like you need to include the SR driver from the Linux drivers ISO: 

Otherwise with a single disk, and this kind of controller, I'm not sure there is any benefit to using raid 0 vs ahci mode.

Thanks,

Kirk...

[alexandre781990]

Thank you very much Kirk. I would be very grateful if you could help me a bit more because I didn't understand everything. This actually the first time I use a cisco server.

I my bios setup, in the advanced tab > South Bridge tab, Onboard SCU storage support is set to enabled and onboard SCU Storage SW Stack is set to LSI SW RAID.

Then, when I want to install linux, I choose UEFI: Generic Flash Disk which is the place my Ubuntu Live CD is. Then when I reboot the installation process starts. However it crashes when looking for hard drive. Do you know where I could find a procedure to install the driver (I only found it for Suse)?

I thank you very much for your support.

Alexandre

[Kirk J · Accepted solution]

If you set the SCU Storage SW Stack to AHCI mode, does the Installer see your local HD then?

How large is the harddisk you have installed? Depending on whether you are installing a 32bit or 64bit OS, and size of disk you are installing to, it may require UEFI boot options.

Please see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI for Ubunto UEFI install help.

If you have an install ISO you used to create the bootable install USB, you might want to consider mounting that ISO via the virtual KVM, on the VM tab, and boot your installer this way.  This will require a compatible version of Java be active in your webbrowser.

If you don't have a boot disk larger than 2 TB, you might want to consider keeping everything in legacy bios mode, and avoid the UEFI complexity that can sometimes show up.

For drivers, these are actually going to be the Intel C600 or Intel AHCI drivers (depending on mode you pick).

Check ucs-cxxx-drivers.2.0.8b.iso\Linux\Storage\Intel\AHCI\Ubuntu\14.04\  AHCI driver readme file says the ahci driver is already included with the OS..

I should note that for Ubuntu, I did not see any versions, or any firmware versions that were officially supported for the Onboard SR mode or AHCI controller.  Please see http://www.cisco.com/web/techdoc/ucs/interoperability/matrix/matrix.html  

While you may be able to get it to work in AHCI mode, it is not officially test/supported.

I believe the 6 port AHCI/PCH controller included with the C240M4 is supported in Ubunto 14.04.

Thanks,

Kirk

[alexandre781990]

Good Morning Kirk,

It works, thank you!!!

Alexandre