Squeeze install on HP DL380G4 with broadcom network.

Hi,

With the non-free exclusions from the iso [1], installation wasn't
possible without taking further steps. Not sure this non-free image
thing is a good idea(tm) -- perhaps images WITH the non-free drivers
need to be made easily available, if not, I can see many people
abandoning Debian to use something "easier" to install.

Fortunately for me, I found a very useful script [2] to add-in the
non-free stuff and it worked very, very well -- but unless things
change, every new netinst ISO will need to be adjusted to work well and
not require other media (nothing more than a network connection and the
ISO file or disk as the case may be).

Method:

1. Download netinst.iso

2. Download script
*Many thanks to Dann Frazier for his script!*

3. Make script executable

4. Update the iso image as follows
# ./add-firmware-to.sh \
debian-squeeze-di-beta2-amd64-netinst.iso \
debian-squeeze-di-beta2-amd64-netinst-custom.iso \
squeeze

And yes, the script already covered squeeze (no adjustments were needed
whatsoever), even though it appears to be for lenny only -- until you
read through the script.

I actually built the system with 3x RAID6 devices (146GB drives); one
RAID6 for /boot, another for swap and the last for LVM2 volume management.

Grub2 installed fine, I had troubles with both grub and lilo install
previously (not sure which ISO's I had tried, but I did try a couple at
least. My /boot is overkill at 4x 256MB (after RAID6), so limitation on
the size of /boot was not an issue with the new installer as it had been
for me on previous installation attempts. If RAID6 wasn't going to work
for /boot, then I was looking at trying RAID1 (6 way mirror); so I could
have made /boot much smaller, but I've still got plenty of disk. I may
re-install again from scratch and fully document all the screens yet.

The installation was done using virtual media via iLo options, so I
didn't need to burn an ISO, nor did I need to touch the physical machine
for anything. The machine in question was an eBay buy with the advanced
iLo license already in place; thanks eBay seller for that one!


[1] http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/s...etinst.iso


[2] http://dannf.org/bloggf/tech/add-firmware-to.html

Again, many thanks to Dann Frazier for his script!


Kind Regards
AndrewM

Andrew McGlashan
Broadband Solutions now including VoIP


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