CentOS + itanium 2 + EFI = ARGH

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M

midway

Senior member
Oct 22, 2004
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I was installing CentOS 4.6 on a Celestica IYA210 (Dual Itanium 2 1.4GHz w 2GB RAM and 73GB SCSI), install went fine, didn't seem like there were any issues at all. However after I reboot once the install is finished the system is unable to boot, the CentOS entry shows up in the EFI boot menu, but it just give me an error when I try to boot from it.

Any ideas?
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
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Did the installer create a small FAT partition? IIRC EFI has to be able to load the initial boot code from a filesystem and the only one it understands is FAT.
 
M

midway

Senior member
Oct 22, 2004
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I assumed it would when I ran the automated install (are there ANY non EFI itaniums?), but that could definitely be a problem.
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
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I could be wrong but I don't think any vendor supports any firmware besides EFI on Itanic systems.
 
M

midway

Senior member
Oct 22, 2004
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Yeah, I just looked at the partition table and the automated installer didn't create a /boot/efi partition at all (and therefore there DEFINITELY isn't a 100MB vfat partition at the beginning of the drive)
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
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Well there ya go, sounds like a bug in the installer if it lets you do that then.
 
Nothinman

Nothinman

Elite Member
Sep 14, 2001
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Well /boot and /boot/efi are probably the only partitions that can't be inside an LVM volume.
 
S

Securix

Junior Member
Apr 7, 2008
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Hi,

I just bought one of these Celestica IYA210 monoliths offa ebay. It's the loudest, most obnoxiously difficult 1U box to work with ever :)

So far I've tried 3 different USB keyboards but all of them invariably hang the box as soon as it gets into the EFI screens. Without a USB keyboard attached, it detects the Broadcom NICs, tries different boot types, and eventually displays the EFI shell menu.

But with a USB keyboard attached, it hangs as soon as it tries to detect the first Broadcom NIC. I can even let it boot all the way through to the EFI menu w/o a keyboard attached. But soon as I plug the USB keyboard in, it hangs the box.

I've tried clearing CMOS, etc but to no avail. The BIOS in there is Enterprise64 2.00 and EFI 1.11.something (I'll have to check when I get home) from December 2003. The BIOS itself is very sparse and has no facility for enabling/disabling/switching PCI/IRQ options, nor does it have the Legacy USB 1.1 stuff as shown in the included manual.

Short of trying to get the com port redirection going, I haven't found a way to communicate with this beast.

Any suggestions? Newer/non-broken BIOS/EFI firmware, etc?
 
S

Securix

Junior Member
Apr 7, 2008
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Just wanted to follow up in case anyone else comes across this issue...

I bought the cheapest USB keyboard on Tiger Direct. No multimedia or Internet controls or anything. Just a plain black USB keyboard... I think it was $9 at the most and it worked fine on this machine.

I was able to install CentOS 4.6 perfectly and other than the obnoxiously loud fans in this thing, it works like a charm. I later added a simple USB optical mouse and that works well too.

Might grab a couple more of them and build a cheap HPC cluster and donate some time to worthy life sciences distributed computing projects running BOINC, etc.
 
J

jhu

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
11,918
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i found someone selling these for $175 each on ebay. is it worth getting? i have a feeling that it's not given that there's probably no power management on these things other than turning the thing off
 
S

Securix

Junior Member
Apr 7, 2008
9
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Yea that's where I got mine. He dropped the price from $250 although I offered $200 each at the time.

They do have baseboard management controllers (BMC) that can communicate over IP and serial, but I haven't really looked to see if there's any deeper level of management functionality. And I imagine you're pretty much stuck with whatever BIOS and EFI revs come onboard since it appears there's next to zero support for these from Celestica or anyone else.

These suckers run LOUD and HOT and there's room for only one hard drive, but for putzing around with Linux on Itanium environments, the price is right.
 
I

imported_wzhao2000

Junior Member
Sep 9, 2008
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Hi, when you install SCSI hard drive, did you need to use the LSI SCSI config tool to configure it? I also got a similar system recently and a Seagate Chetaah 80 pin SCSI drive to install Windows 2003 on it. But it seems the SCSI hard drive is not recognized by the system..
 
P

pwfig

Junior Member
Sep 12, 2008
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I bought one of these a few weeks ago and just got around to getting it working with CentOS 4.6. I installed an HP 36.4 U160 SCSI drive.

The server was finicky about booting until I figured out a few things:
1. SCSI Terminators - The server would take a long time to go through the startup sequence to where you would get to the EFI shell. I put two SCSI terminators on the two external connectors, and it made a world of difference in reducing boot time, not to also mention that the LSI Logic config utility (Control-C) would not identify the disk until the terminators were in place.
2. Internal DVD-ROM - I first tried to use an external USB DVD-ROM to load CentOS, but it had issues identifying the drive, so I installed an internal laptop DVD-ROM (on the mini IDE flex cable connector) to solve that issue. The front door to the DVD-ROM drive rubs against the plastic front cover of the server (even after removing the removable cover behind the drive slot), so I removed the entire front plastic cover (6 torx screws).
3. Keyboard and Mouse - I used a USB to keyboard/mouse splitter to attach my Compaq 8 port KVM switch (ps/2 style connectors). One splitter didn't work where it would at first see the keyboard and mouse early in the boot sequence, but later lost track of the mouse. The other splitter worked, and I also messed with the USB legacy setting in the BIOS (which now no longer appears in the BIOS screen!). I think disabling USB legacy support is the way to go.
4. Connect the NICs - I'm not sure if this step helps as much as adding the SCSI terminators, but I would make sure the 3 NICs (2 GIGe, 1 100 base-t) are actually connected to a switch. I get the impression with this box that if you don't connect everything you are able to connect, it will quietly give you errors (except for the serial port, which I didn't mess with).
5. Serial Console - If you don't have a KVM, you might want to setup the serial console redirection and put a serial cable onto another PC so you can observe console boot. I suppose the management LAN port can also re-direct, but I didn't set this up. If you use the LAN port, and it gets to the Linux boot prompt, and hangs thereafter, you may need to change the baud rate on the serial port as I have seen this issue on other Itanium servers, where the serial port speed, if not set to 115kbaud (this server defaults to 192.kbaud), will ahve issues outputting to the MANAGEMENT LAN PORT. I believe this is documented in the Redhat and SuSe installation guides for Itanium servers.
5. EFI shell - The included User's guide gives you some limited info on the EFI shell. More info about EFI can be found at the Intel web-site. However, once you get everything laoded and working, you may not have to spend too much time in the EFI shell, except for possibly changing the boot order (I intend to play around with PXE Lan boot later). EFI on this box looks like EFI on any other Itanium box I have worked with.

Once I did all the above, I re-booted the server, it identified the SCSI drive, found the DVD-ROM as FS0: in the EFI shell.

To start the CentOS install, type FS0: from the EFI shell, LS should show files on the media, enter bootia64.efi which should take you to the Linux boot prompt, which after a few seconds should start the installer.

I did a complete install of CentOS 4.6, ia64 version (see "everything" option at the bottom of the list of packages). Everything installed and came up clean. I recommend doing the media check step in the installer so you don't have problems later in the install sequence. I am now going through all the package updates (ef2update put a notice on the CentOS desktop which indicated updates were available, and clicking on the alert invokes YUM to do the updates).
Not a bad little box for $175 (except for the noise and the fact that it heats up the house). If you need to do Itanium work, it is not a bad option. I'm trying to figure out if the server allows the current 1.4GHz Madison processors to be upgraded to the newer Montecito processors (lower power, Intel VT extensions, faster, etc)? Anybody know the answer to this one?
I just ordered a bunch of PC2700 ECC registered memory to get it up to the 8GB max.
It doesn't look like the servers are available any more on eBay, otherwise I would pick up a spare.

Good Luck!
 
J

jkmccarthy

Junior Member
Sep 28, 2008
5
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0
During the startup sequence, my Celestica IYA210 frequently hangs after the EFI firmware banner and Broadcom NIC announcement, but before (the second NIC announcement? and) the EFI file systems and boot options menu.

Has anyone else seen this type of behavior on their IYA210 beast ? Suspected cause and/or workaround ?

Has anyone else tried following the steps in the book to reset the BIOS firmware, and/or update the BIOS firmware ? What pitfalls am I likely to encounter if I try that to cure my machine's tendancy to hang late in the startup sequence ?

Also, has anyone successfully accessed the BMC on their machine via IPMI, and is it possible (just not adviseable?) to reduce the fan speed a notch or two so the machine is not so extremely loud? Or is there a better way to address the noise issue ?

- - -

Lastly, a previous poster mentioned devoting these beasts to BOINC. I've installed the "3rd party" ia64 linux BOINC client, but haven't found any projects with applications that can run on ia64 (itanium) linux. Are you instead using the IA-32 Execution Layer emulation and 32-bit linux BOINC client ? I'd be interested to know how that's working out for you ... my first ia64 linux install on the Celestica was "Scientific Linux IA-64 v4.1" (like CentOS, Sci-Linux is built on Red Hat sources) but v4.1 had the wrong glibc version for the 32-bit linux BOINC client. For this and other reasons, I'm now upgrading to the beta version of Scientific Linux Cern IA-64 v5.x, which includes glibc 2.5.

Anyone running Fedora for Itanium, or is CentOS the ia64 linux distro of choice ?

Thanks in advance for any replies,

--Jim
 
I

imported_wzhao2000

Junior Member
Sep 9, 2008
2
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0
I bought a 80 pin SCSI hard drive plugged in, but the SCSI setup utility cannot detect it, do I need to set SCSI terminator? It seems there is no place to set it. Does anyone use 80 pin SCSI drive too?

Also, per the server manual, there is an IDE connector on board, but it seems IDE cable doesn't fit it :(

 
J

jkmccarthy

Junior Member
Sep 28, 2008
5
0
0
wzhao --

I think what pwfig is saying is that he had better luck with SCSI terminators on the two *external* SCSI connectors on the back of the Celestica IYA210 server. You can get an idea of what these are by searching on ebay for: VHDCI SCSI terminator

For best results, safest thing to do is put one of these on each of the two external SCSI connectors on the back of the server. Note that the two VHDCI SCSI connectors on the back of the IYA210 server are very close together, so when ordering pay attention to the size of the terminators (since two will need to sit side-by-side). I suggest looking for terminators in which the connector is "offset" towards the bottom of the unit.

On my IYA210 server, using just one drive in the internal SCSI sled, and no terminators on the rear connectors, the server recognized the internal drive (a 36Gb Seagate Ultra3 80-pin) but reported it had to be downgraded to SCSI "narrow" (8-bits wide data path, not 16-bits wide). Maybe terminators on the external connectors would prevent it from needing to downgrade to SCSI narrow, I don't know.

Instead, I connected an HP DS2100 external SCSI drive bay to one of the rear connectors (with a terminator on the second SCSI "out" connector on the DS2100, but no terminator on the second SCSI connector on the IYA210 server). In this configuratoin the server properly recognized the drives in the DS2100 external bay, but it was no longer able to see the internal drive at all.

At this point, I removed the drive from the internal SCSI sled, and now have that drive mounted inside the external DS2100 SCSI drive bay. In this configuration the same 36Gb Seagate Ultra3 drive gets auto-configured by the LSI driver as 16-bits wide, 80 Mb/sec transfer rate, with a message that after the operating system loads, transfer at 160 Mb/sec should be supported.

- - -

The connector at the end of the IDE cable is a miniature IDE connector of the type often used in laptop computers for "slim" style CD drives or DVD drives. Again, shop around for slim laptop CD drive or DVD drive, and you should find something compatible.

E-mail me privately if you'd like pointers to specific eBay auctions for compatible hardware (IDE CD or DVD drives and/or terminators)

-- Jim
 
S

Securix

Junior Member
Apr 7, 2008
9
0
0
Originally posted by: jkmccarthy
During the startup sequence, my Celestica IYA210 frequently hangs after the EFI firmware banner and Broadcom NIC announcement, but before (the second NIC announcement? and) the EFI file systems and boot options menu.

Has anyone else seen this type of behavior on their IYA210 beast ? Suspected cause and/or workaround ?
Click to expand...

Hi Jim, see my previous post. I had the same issue with the machine hanging after the two Broadcom announcements. It turned out to be the USB keyboard. When I unplugged it, the machine boots through. At first I tried a Logitech wireless keyboard, which would hang. Then I tried wired generic with all sorts of multimedia controls on it like play/stop/ff/rew and Internet shortcuts. That didn't work. Then I bought the cheapest simplest USB keyboard to come out of China, and that worked. It would boot past the Broadcom stuff.

But if you've gotten it to work, albeit a little flakey, then I'm not sure its the same exact problem. I'm also using a very simple USB 3-button (scrollwheel) optical mouse with no issues.

Has anyone else tried following the steps in the book to reset the BIOS firmware, and/or update the BIOS firmware ? What pitfalls am I likely to encounter if I try that to cure my machine's tendancy to hang late in the startup sequence ?
Click to expand...

I've searched everywhere for updated EFI or BIOS but no luck. Celestica is known for producing engineering prototypes for large manufacturers, so my guess is these were surplus that never made it. EFI has been heavily adopted by Apple for use in their most recent Macs but I have not seen it anywhere else besides Apple Macs and Itanium-based servers.

I'm also going to guess that the EFI code and the actual BIOS code reside in either separate flash chips or at least separate areas of flash because I *THINK* though I'm not at all sure, that one can be updated independently of the other. The problem is, unless you copy and hack an EFI and BIOS package from, say, an HP box that you will find anything newer that what these machines have in them.

I'm not sure how many of these were sold on ebay (I think the vendor had 20 or so up) but we can all post our revs and see if everyone's got the same. If not, then someone can volunteer to copy theirs out and post it.

Like a previous poster also mentioned, I bought a bunch of old laptop CD-ROM drives and that's what I used to install CentOS. I have not tried any external optical drives, although I think I did try a USB flash drive that seemed to read FAT32 files properly.

Also, has anyone successfully accessed the BMC on their machine via IPMI, and is it possible (just not adviseable?) to reduce the fan speed a notch or two so the machine is not so extremely loud? Or is there a better way to address the noise issue ?
Click to expand...

I addressed my BMC controller but have not tried to access it with any sort of management or instrumentation app. I think I'll putz with it at some point.

Lastly, a previous poster mentioned devoting these beasts to BOINC. I've installed the "3rd party" ia64 linux BOINC client, but haven't found any projects with applications that can run on ia64 (itanium) linux. Are you instead using the IA-32 Execution Layer emulation and 32-bit linux BOINC client ? I'd be interested to know how that's working out for you ... my first ia64 linux install on the Celestica was "Scientific Linux IA-64 v4.1" (like CentOS, Sci-Linux is built on Red Hat sources) but v4.1 had the wrong glibc version for the 32-bit linux BOINC client. For this and other reasons, I'm now upgrading to the beta version of Scientific Linux Cern IA-64 v5.x, which includes glibc 2.5.
Click to expand...

That was me. I was planning to start a graduate CS program this fall but that fell through until the spring most likely. I was planning to work on volunteer computing projects as part of my studies. In fact I ordered 2 more of these machines (for a total of 4) but also realized if I planned to run these in my house, I'd need the electric company to build a small nuclear power plant in the back yard. And I wouldn't need to run my furnace this winter.

However the possibility of forming a user group around this box has piqued my interest once again. If there's enough interest, perhaps someone can devote a website, blog, or Wiki to this. Any takers?

Anyone running Fedora for Itanium, or is CentOS the ia64 linux distro of choice ?
Click to expand...

CentOS is pretty good RedHat fork, and seemed to be decently supported, so I decided to try that. The real doozie would be if anyone has tried Windows Server 2008 Itanium yet...

-Anthony

 
S

Securix

Junior Member
Apr 7, 2008
9
0
0
Originally posted by: wzhao2000
I bought a 80 pin SCSI hard drive plugged in, but the SCSI setup utility cannot detect it, do I need to set SCSI terminator? It seems there is no place to set it. Does anyone use 80 pin SCSI drive too?

Also, per the server manual, there is an IDE connector on board, but it seems IDE cable doesn't fit it :(
Click to expand...

I used some really old drives, I think some 68-pin 9.1GB and those worked fine. I was planning to just use an external NAS (ie. Linux box with lots of hard drives running NFS or Samba) to share space.

I read the thing about the internal IDE interface but I was stumped as well.

-Anthony
 
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