Needed Drivers for Poweredge R210-II BIOS 2.1.2 to install CentOS 5.4 x86 64bits ?

In addition, I've downloaded BIOS_YFWXP_LN32_2.1.2.BIN and I downloaded catalog.xml files from ftp.dell.com but when using USC on R210-II, it's still giving errors... error: "verifying the signature of the Catalog" - it's stuck like this till I hard-reset it. I am a newbie about installing centos on Dell servers, can you please provide a step-by-step straight forward to-do list to install required drivers ? I appreciate your help in advance, Thanks!

Hi there,

If you are just trying to get a new install of CentOS 5.4 onto the R210-II, the biggest obstacle is probably going to be the controller driver. Do you know what internal storage controller you have? Standard options for internal controllers on the R210-II include the PERC H200, PERC S300, and SAS 6iR. The PERC H200 and SAS 6iR use the LSI drivers included in the kernel and do not need to be loaded separately to install. However you may need to create virtual disks before you can install to them. The S300 however is not supported on Linux and no driver exists for it -- if this is the storage controller you have, you will either need to use a supported Windows OS or install a controller for which a Linux driver exists. Once you have the OS installed you can do a yum update to get the newest kernel including kernel module hardware drivers (or you can leave it at 5.4 if your application/deployment requires it). Also once you have the OS installed you can run the BIOS update using the BIN file you referenced. It has some dependencies (compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686) which can be installed with yum install compat-libstdc++-33.i686 libstdc++.i686 libxml2.i686 . Let me know if that answers your questions or if I can provide additional information or assistance. Thanks again for choosing Dell!

Hi Jon,

Thanks a lot for your quick response! We bought the default configuration for R210-II. Config summary: "Hard Drive Configuration

Onboard SATA, 1-2 Hard Drives connected to onboard SATA Controller -No RAID [Included in Price]" ," Internal Controller: No Controller [Included in Price] " and " External Controller : None " . By the way; I re-tried USC to deploy OS, this time it asked me to "press any key after reboot to install OS" ,but when it rebooted it didn't show any "press any key" alert,etc.. I kept pressing keys randomly after rebooting, but nothing's changed and at the final screen : " PXE-E53: No boot filename received " and "PXE-MOF: Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM      No operating system is currently installed on this computer. " errors i received.  Thanks again. Allen

Thanks Allen. Can you please go into the BIOS by pressing F2 during POST and under Embedded SATA, check what it is set to. It should not be set to RAID. If it is currently set to AHCI try setting it to ATA, and vice-versa. Then please boot from the CentOS disc directly (don't use USC) and try to install it. Does that work out for you?

Hi Jon, unfortunately result is the same... It was setup to AHCI and i changed it to ATA, and rebooted from centos disc directly. But nothing's changed.. last screen:  "eSATA Port device not found.  Strike F1 to continue, F2 to run system setup program " when I press F1, it gives me error" no OS is installed... ", when i press F2 it goes back to system SATA settings..  Allen

To bring this thread to a conclusion in case anyone should find it searching, the R210-II integrated SATA chipset is only supported under Windows. To use Linux or VMware a supported hardware storage controller must be present. The R210-II controllers supporting RHEL/SLES are the PERC H200 and the SAS 6iR.

Good to know Jonathan ... thanks.