Dell Poweredge 2800
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I'm trying to install the latest release of PFsense on a dell poweredge 2800. It currently has windows 2003 on it, but its decommissioned, hence Pfsense comes in.
I am having issues booting off the CD though. So first, the Pfsense disc I burned works (i burnt it 4 times just to make sure). I can boot this disc on 2 other computers fine, however the PE2800 will not boot off this disc. So I decided to test if the CD drive is busted, so I put a windows XP install CD in, and it boots fine off of this.
Could this be an issue with how old this server is? Bios issue? Anyone else have this problem with this hardware?
Thanks
I run a Dell PowerEdge 750 no problem but it may be a bit newer. Does it give you an error message and did you set the cd rom as the first boot device?
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Can you boot from any other CDs you have burned? Some CD rom drives can be fussy. Poweredge 2800 is not that old can you boot from USB instead?
Steve
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Can you boot from any other CDs you have burned? Some CD rom drives can be fussy. Poweredge 2800 is not that old can you boot from USB instead?
Steve
Could be it too. Who knows maybe the CD rom is either broken or the optics are dirty.
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I'm trying to install the latest release of PFsense on a dell poweredge 2800. It currently has windows 2003 on it, but its decommissioned, hence Pfsense comes in.
I am having issues booting off the CD though. So first, the Pfsense disc I burned works (i burnt it 4 times just to make sure). I can boot this disc on 2 other computers fine, however the PE2800 will not boot off this disc. So I decided to test if the CD drive is busted, so I put a windows XP install CD in, and it boots fine off of this.
Could this be an issue with how old this server is? Bios issue? Anyone else have this problem with this hardware?
Thanks
It's not that old. However, it does only seem to have SCSI interface. The SCSI adapter might be fussy over booting the CD. You might want to try using the USB bootable installer images and a USB thumbdrive instead.
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The only thing I can think of is it does not like booting off burnt CDs, as the windows XP cd I tested to boot off was an official copy, and that booted fine. However ANY linux distro BSD disc I use (burnt) does not boot, no error messages, just straight to booting the OS already installed.
Its very annoying.
As for the USB installer images, is there an application I need to use to put that on a USB drive ?
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The only thing I can think of is it does not like booting off burnt CDs, as the windows XP cd I tested to boot off was an official copy, and that booted fine. However ANY linux distro BSD disc I use (burnt) does not boot, no error messages, just straight to booting the OS already installed.
Its very annoying.
As for the USB installer images, is there an application I need to use to put that on a USB drive ?
Try higher quality CDs too. I bought bulk CDs once from Office Max that were very cheap and had some issues. Memorex I believe they were.
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As for the USB installer images, is there an application I need to use to put that on a USB drive ?
There are many programs you can use. Physdiskwrite works well.
Steve
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It's not that old. However, it does only seem to have SCSI interface.
The CD is IDE, it's a laptop drive using a non-standard connection.
I tried one I have here and it boots to a 2.0RC1 cdrw I burned a week or so back.
I assume you went in the BIOS and set the boot order etc. I made sure mine was on the latest BIOS, backplane firmware, raid firmware, etc. Put in the tag at the Dell support page, there may even be an update for the cdrom firmware. -
Yeah. I have made sure the boot priority was set to CDROM first. I know it works, well sort of, because I can boot my Official copy of WIndows XP on it fine. But any Linux / BSD I try, it will not boot.
I'm assuming something funky is going on, or it is a firmware issue / bios update that needs to be applied.
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An Update.
For the life of me I could not get CDROM booting working with burnt media on the PE 2800, so I resorted to USB memstick booting. I found the bios a bit clumsy for configuring this, but I managed to write the img file provided to create a bootable USB stick.
Thanks for your help guys.
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I had similar issues with a Dell PowerEdge 1750. Whatever brand CDRom Dell put in those servers has major issues with burned discs. I finally resorted to swapping out the drive for a slim CDRW which has no issues.
