2950III very slow during boot & DRAC virtual device issue

1,are the 5 units all met the same issue(slowly)?

2,for the DRAC issue,you can try check  "Virtual Media Configuration" in ctrl+E.

Hello,

I get the issue on only one of them.

Is the startup always slow at the Dell splashscreen?

Does it boot quicker from a reboot, as apposed to a cold boot?

Does it get to a certain point and hang, or does the bar just count very slowly?

If you're game, reduce the system to minimum post config by removing bits that aren't required to boot, and see if this makes a difference. Then start adding components from there to see if things change.

For the DRAC issue, perhaps try swapping DRACs between systems and see if things change.

I have the exact same issue.  Oddly enough I did a firmware update and DRAC 5 update with tech support and everything was working fine.  Then this morning I installed VMware ESXi for like the fourth time and then all of a sudden when I decided to give Citrix Xen a try instead I get the exact same symptoms as you did.

Try resetting the bios. Go into the bios settings (F2) and alt+F until screen flashes. That should reset everything to factory settings. I would also make sure the bios is flashed to the latest revision.

Thanks Veltech, I didn't know about the ALT-F reset.  I tried it but it didn't help.  I get the feeling that it's related to the DRAC.  it paused for about a minute and a half when the progress bar is about 1/6th of the way then again for another minute and a half when it displays "Remote Access Controller detected".  If I had to guess I'd say it's a network issue with the DRAC controller. Unfortunately this machine is at a remote location or I'd simply pull the DRAC and test the boot with or without it to prove my theory.

It wasn't happening before the DRAC update and I used it for a whole day and part of a morning after the DRAC update and then all of a sudden these symptoms appeared.

Okay I got it fixed! A win for once.  I tried to re-flash the DRAC5 firmware from my now installed Xen Server 5.6, it kept failing saying that the flash device had to be deactivated.  I would deactivate it but it was obvious that the linux .bin file I was using to update the firmware must be activating it and using it to stage the firmware upgrade so it was a catch-22.

I went back to the dell support site and finally found the package that is meant for the DRAC web admin firmware update.  It's not that obvious, they just call it a file that you can download and extract on your hard drive.  They don't state clearly that it's meant to be used from the DRAC web console.  Perhaps it can be used in more than one way?

In any case I was able to sucessfully update the DRAC5 firmware to the same version and that cleared up my long pause on reboot, and possible the mounting of the virtual CD drive I think they were hand in hand.

You should do a hard restart of the RAC.

SSH into idrac (ssh admin@idrac-ip) and run

racadm racreset hard

Allow a minute for the RAC to reboot (you can monitor it with ping), then atleast my problems are fixed...