Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1 for Dell PowerEdge 1655MC blade servers.

5/20/03: Interested in getting RH73 on your blade, instead? use this iso.. it works for network installs: rh73-blade-bootnet.iso.gz

For RH Advance Server 2.1, Gunzip and burn this ISO v1.1 (11 meg) to a CD, and place the ISO, an edited copy of the example.ks (found on the ISO or here), and the redhat-2.1AS/ installation tree onto a webserver on your LAN. Edit the example.ks (paying close attention to key areas labeled CHANGEME). Then boot from the CD you burned from the ISO to find this menu:

    This ISO was made specifically to install RHAS 2.1 onto
    Dell PowerEdge 1655MC Blade Servers.  Dell doesn't (yet) support this.

 -  To install RHAS manually, press the  key.
    Be forewarned though, that you'll want to upgrade to a newer
    kernel (2.4.9e12 for instance) BEFORE you reboot at the end.
    So just switch to Alt-F2 terminal and then install the updated
    kernel RPM via the network.  Otherwise your scsi and nic won't work
    after the first reboot.

 -  A better option is to install RHAS using a Kickstart script
    on another server, type "linux ks=http://server/dir/filename".
    See the EXAMPLE kickstart file in the root of this CDROM/ISO,
    example.ks Please note that this ISO image ALSO needs to be available
    via HTTP somewhere, so that the kickstart install can grab it and
    open it up for the post-install steps.  See the comments in the
    example.ks for more info.  This ks file handles a lot of
    important POST installation things.

This example kickstart was ripped from the Dell RedHat 7.3 install that comes with the PE1655MC. I've cleaned it up a bit, but it's still not 100% clean.

Most noteably, I made this ISO put the Dell Utility partition onto your blade, just like the Dell Openmanage Server Assistant would. Except a whole lot faster. ;) This, of course, only happens if you use the kickstart option, as it does it's magic in the POST install section.

Questions? Bugs? Comments? Email me

History

1.0: I built this using updated modules from RedHat. But since the blade server can't have both a floppy and a cdrom attached at the same time, I had to merge the driver disk with the bootnet.img. I also stole the sd_mod.o out of stage2.img and put it on the boot ISO. Dell wouldn't give out any info on how to do this, so I took it upon myself. I can't promise a stable machine. But neither could Dell.

1.1: Minor update to add Rock Ridge filesystem to ISO, and updated example.ks kickstart file to use proper filenames.. No more 8.3 nonsense!

5/20/03: I added a similar image to put RH73 on the blade. Skipping the Dell install boot cd b.s. that put us through. Also making network installs an option!