HOWTO install gentoo on an IBM BladeCenter

From RADION OpenLab

IBM Bladecenter

1 Release history

2 Introduction

If you have no experience with IBM's BladeCenter you should read IBM's Deployment Guide first :

2.1 Current thoughts and considerations

In order to boot the live cd you have to use the kernel option dobladecenter for gentoo to boot and load the USB driven MediaPanel. This adds some extra pauses into the boot process for the slow USB CDROM of the IBM BladeCenter. Without this you will get a lot of SquashFS errors and no usable live environment.

Gentoo Linux Installation LiveCD                     http://www.gentoo.org
Enter to Boot; F1 for kernels  F2 for options.

boot: gentoo dobladecenter

when you stumble over the problem that you can't use the external ports co get network connectivity and the switch itself is configured propery but states : Administratively shut down you have to enable the external ports in the i/o Module configuration AND NOT in the switch configuration.

Also worth noting is the fact, that most CISCO Switches are in VLAN1 per default. If you deployed your switches without changing the VLAN you can't connect to the Blades because the internal CIGESM Switch has its management interface in VLAN1 but the Blades in VLAN2. So you either have to put all your CISCOs into VLAN2 or use VLAN routing means because YOU CANNOT CHANGE the VLAN of the managament interface.

<box>When the live cd is booted your MPT Fusion Array is probably sdb. Remember: This is only the case when you are in the liveCD environment. Once you are finished</box>

3 udev

Mount /dev

mount -o bind /dev /mnt/gentoo/dev 

To see which devices nodes are present before the /dev filesystem is mounted, run the following commands:

Code Listing 3.1: Listing device nodes available at boot

 
# mkdir test
# mount --bind / test
# cd test/dev
# ls

The devices needed for a successful boot are /dev/null and /dev/console. If they didn't show up in the previous test, you have to create them manually. Issue the following commands in the test/dev/ directory:

Code Listing 3.2: Creating necessary device node files

  
# mknod -m 660 console c 5 1
# mknod -m 660 null c 1 3

When you're finished, don't forget to unmount the test/ directory:

Code Listing 3.3: Unmounting the test/ directory

  
# cd ../..
# umount test
# rmdir test